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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William the Conqueror, by E. A. Freeman
+
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+Title: William the Conqueror
+
+Author: E. A. Freeman
+
+Release Date: October, 1997  [EBook #1066]
+[This file was first posted on February 12, 1998]
+[Most recently updated: June 28, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+William the Conqueror
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+Introduction
+The Early Years of William
+William's First Visit to England
+The Reign of William in Normandy
+Harold's Oat to William
+The Negotiations of Duke William
+William's Invasion of England
+The Conquest of England
+The Settlement of England
+The Revolts against William
+The Last Years of William
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+The history of England, like the land and its people, has been
+specially insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influences
+from without.  No land has owed more than England to the personal
+action of men not of native birth.  Britain was truly called
+another world, in opposition to the world of the European mainland,
+the world of Rome.  In every age the history of Britain is the
+history of an island, of an island great enough to form a world of
+itself.  In speaking of Celts or Teutons in Britain, we are
+speaking, not simply of Celts and Teutons, but of Celts and Teutons
+parted from their kinsfolk on the mainland, and brought under the
+common influences of an island world.  The land has seen several
+settlements from outside, but the settlers have always been brought
+under the spell of their insular position.  Whenever settlement has
+not meant displacement, the new comers have been assimilated by the
+existing people of the land.  When it has meant displacement, they
+have still become islanders, marked off from those whom they left
+behind by characteristics which were the direct result of
+settlement in an island world.
+
+The history of Britain then, and specially the history of England,
+has been largely a history of elements absorbed and assimilated
+from without.  But each of those elements has done somewhat to
+modify the mass into which it was absorbed.  The English land and
+nation are not as they might have been if they had never in later
+times absorbed the Fleming, the French Huguenot, the German
+Palatine.  Still less are they as they might have been, if they had
+not in earlier times absorbed the greater elements of the Dane and
+the Norman.  Both were assimilated; but both modified the character
+and destiny of the people into whose substance they were absorbed.
+The conquerors from Normandy were silently and peacefully lost in
+the greater mass of the English people; still we can never be as if
+the Norman had never come among us.  We ever bear about us the
+signs of his presence.  Our colonists have carried those signs with
+them into distant lands, to remind men that settlers in America and
+Australia came from a land which the Norman once entered as a
+conqueror.  But that those signs of his presence hold the place
+which they do hold in our mixed political being, that, badges of
+conquest as they are, no one feels them to be badges of conquest--
+all this comes of the fact that, if the Norman came as a conqueror,
+he came as a conqueror of a special, perhaps almost of an unique
+kind.  The Norman Conquest of England has, in its nature and in its
+results, no exact parallel in history.  And that it has no exact
+parallel in history is largely owing to the character and position
+of the man who wrought it.  That the history of England for the
+last eight hundred years has been what it has been has largely come
+of the personal character of a single man.  That we are what we are
+to this day largely comes of the fact that there was a moment when
+our national destiny might be said to hang on the will of a single
+man, and that that man was William, surnamed at different stages of
+his life and memory, the Bastard, the Conqueror, and the Great.
+
+With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William the
+Norman Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of English
+statesmen.  That so it should be is characteristic of English
+history.  Our history has been largely wrought for us by men who
+have come in from without, sometimes as conquerors, sometimes as
+the opposite of conquerors; but in whatever character they came,
+they had to put on the character of Englishmen, and to make their
+work an English work.  From whatever land they came, on whatever
+mission they came, as statesmen they were English.  William, the
+greatest of his class, is still but a member of a class.  Along
+with him we must reckon a crowd of kings, bishops, and high
+officials in many ages of our history.  Theodore of Tarsus and Cnut
+of Denmark, Lanfranc of Pavia and Anselm of Aosta, Randolf Flambard
+and Roger of Salisbury, Henry of Anjou and Simon of Montfort, are
+all written on a list of which William is but the foremost.  The
+largest number come in William's own generation and in the
+generations just before and after it.  But the breed of England's
+adopted children and rulers never died out.  The name of William
+the Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his namesake the
+Conqueror, yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou.  And we
+count among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung from
+other lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, as
+statesmen at least, must count as English.  As we look along the
+whole line, even among the conquering kings and their immediate
+instruments, their work never takes the shape of the rooting up of
+the earlier institutions of the land.  Those institutions are
+modified, sometimes silently by the mere growth of events,
+sometimes formally and of set purpose.  Old institutions get new
+names; new institutions are set up alongside of them.  But the old
+ones are never swept away; they sometimes die out; they are never
+abolished.  This comes largely of the absorbing and assimilating
+power of the island world.  But it comes no less of personal
+character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of the
+personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances
+in which he found himself.
+
+
+Our special business now is with the personal acts and character of
+William, and above all with his acts and character as an English
+statesman.  But the English reign of William followed on his
+earlier Norman reign, and its character was largely the result of
+his earlier Norman reign.  A man of the highest natural gifts, he
+had gone through such a schooling from his childhood upwards as
+falls to the lot of few princes.  Before he undertook the conquest
+of England, he had in some sort to work the conquest of Normandy.
+Of the ordinary work of a sovereign in a warlike age, the defence
+of his own land, the annexation of other lands, William had his
+full share.  With the land of his overlord he had dealings of the
+most opposite kinds.  He had to call in the help of the French king
+to put down rebellion in the Norman duchy, and he had to drive back
+more than one invasion of the French king at the head of an united
+Norman people.  He added Domfront and Maine to his dominions, and
+the conquest of Maine, the work as much of statesmanship as of
+warfare, was the rehearsal of the conquest of England.  There,
+under circumstances strangely like those of England, he learned his
+trade as conqueror, he learned to practise on a narrower field the
+same arts which he afterwards practised on a wider.  But after all,
+William's own duchy was his special school; it was his life in his
+own duchy which specially helped to make him what he was.
+Surrounded by trials and difficulties almost from his cradle, he
+early learned the art of enduring trials and overcoming
+difficulties; he learned how to deal with men; he learned when to
+smite and when to spare; and it is not a little to his honour that,
+in the long course of such a reign as his, he almost always showed
+himself far more ready to spare than to smite.
+
+Before then we can look at William as an English statesman, we must
+first look on him in the land in which he learned the art of
+statesmanship.  We must see how one who started with all the
+disadvantages which are implied in his earlier surname of the
+Bastard came to win and to deserve his later surnames of the
+Conqueror and the Great.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM--A.D. 1028-1051
+
+
+
+If William's early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling for
+his later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and his
+schooling began early.  His nominal reign began at the age of seven
+years, and his personal influence on events began long before he
+had reached the usual years of discretion.  And the events of his
+minority might well harden him, while they could not corrupt him in
+the way in which so many princes have been corrupted.  His whole
+position, political and personal, could not fail to have its effect
+in forming the man.  He was Duke of the Normans, sixth in
+succession from Rolf, the founder of the Norman state.  At the time
+of his accession, rather more than a hundred and ten years had
+passed since plunderers, occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia,
+had changed into acknowledged members of the Western or Karolingian
+kingdom.  The Northmen, changed, name and thing, into NORMANS, were
+now in all things members of the Christian and French-speaking
+world.  But French as the Normans of William's day had become,
+their relation to the kings and people of France was not a friendly
+one.  At the time of the settlement of Rolf, the western kingdom of
+the Franks had not yet finally passed to the Duces Francorum at
+Paris; Rolf became the man of the Karolingian king at Laon.  France
+and Normandy were two great duchies, each owning a precarious
+supremacy in the king of the West-Franks.  On the one hand,
+Normandy had been called into being by a frightful dismemberment of
+the French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement had
+been cut off.  France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest cities,
+and she was cut off from the sea and from the lower course of her
+own river.  On the other hand, the French and the Norman dukes had
+found their interest in a close alliance; Norman support had done
+much to transfer the crown from Laon to Paris, and to make the Dux
+Francorum and the Rex Francorum the same person.  It was the
+adoption of the French speech and manners by the Normans, and their
+steady alliance with the French dukes, which finally determined
+that the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not Teutonic,
+and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and not
+Aquitanian.  If the creation of Normandy had done much to weaken
+France as a duchy, it had done not a little towards the making of
+France as a kingdom.  Laon and its crown, the undefined influence
+that went with the crown, the prospect of future advance to the
+south, had been bought by the loss of Rouen and of the mouth of the
+Seine.
+
+There was much therefore at the time of William's accession to keep
+the French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms.  The old
+alliance had been strengthened by recent good offices.  The
+reigning king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help of
+William's father Robert.  On the other hand, the original ground of
+the alliance, mutual support against the Karolingian king, had
+passed away.  A King of the French reigning at Paris was more
+likely to remember what the Normans had cost him as duke than what
+they had done for him as king.  And the alliance was only an
+alliance of princes.  The mutual dislike between the people of the
+two countries was strong.  The Normans had learned French ways, but
+French and Normans had not become countrymen.  And, as the fame of
+Normandy grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike.
+William, in short, inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state of
+relations towards the king who was at once his chief neighbour and
+his overlord.
+
+More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the
+young duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the
+kinsfolk of his own house.  William was not as yet the Great or the
+Conqueror, but he was the Bastard from the beginning.  There was
+then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to
+kingdoms and duchies.  Everywhere a single kingly or princely house
+supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession.  Everywhere,
+even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was
+always likely to succeed his father.  The growth of feudal notions
+too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle.  Still no
+rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince
+had not left a full-grown son.  The question as to legitimate birth
+was equally unsettled.  Irregular unions of all kinds, though
+condemned by the Church, were tolerated in practice, and were
+nowhere more common than among the Norman dukes.  In truth the
+feeling of the kingliness of the stock, the doctrine that the king
+should be the son of a king, is better satisfied by the succession
+of the late king's bastard son than by sending for some distant
+kinsman, claiming perhaps only through females.  Still bastardy, if
+it was often convenient to forget it, could always be turned
+against a man.  The succession of a bastard was never likely to be
+quite undisputed or his reign to be quite undisturbed.
+
+Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of
+being at once bastard and minor.  He was born at Falaise in 1027 or
+1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count
+of Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of
+Fulbert the tanner.  There was no pretence of marriage between his
+parents; yet his father, when he designed William to succeed him,
+might have made him legitimate, as some of his predecessors had
+been made, by a marriage with his mother.  In 1028 Robert succeeded
+his brother Richard in the duchy.  In 1034 or 1035 he determined to
+go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  He called on his barons to swear
+allegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his successor in
+case he never came back.  Their wise counsel to stay at home, to
+look after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, was
+unheeded.  Robert carried his point.  The succession of young
+William was accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by the
+overlord Henry King of the French.  The arrangement soon took
+effect.  Robert died on his way back before the year 1035 was out,
+and his son began, in name at least, his reign of fifty-two years
+over the Norman duchy.
+
+The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could
+happen only when no one else had a distinctly better claim William
+could never have held his ground for a moment against a brother of
+his father of full age and undoubted legitimacy.  But among the
+living descendants of former dukes some were themselves of doubtful
+legitimacy, some were shut out by their profession as churchmen,
+some claimed only through females.  Robert had indeed two half-
+brothers, but they were young and their legitimacy was disputed; he
+had an uncle, Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been legitimated
+by the later marriage of his parents.  The rival who in the end
+gave William most trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of a
+daughter of his grandfather Richard the Good.  Though William's
+succession was not liked, no one of these candidates was generally
+preferred to him.  He therefore succeeded; but the first twelve
+years of his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies of
+unruly nobles, who hated the young duke as the one representative
+of law and order, and who were not eager to set any one in his
+place who might be better able to enforce them.
+
+Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took
+in two classes of men.  All were noble who had any kindred or
+affinity, legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house.  The
+natural children of Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his
+marriage with their mother Gunnor, and many of the great houses of
+Normandy sprang from her brothers and sisters.  The mother of
+William received no such exaltation as this.  Besides her son, she
+had borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide, and, after Robert's death,
+she married a Norman knight named Herlwin of Conteville.  To him,
+besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and Robert.  They rose
+to high posts in Church and State, and played an important part in
+their half-brother's history.  Besides men whose nobility was of
+this kind, there were also Norman houses whose privileges were
+older than the amours or marriages of any duke, houses whose
+greatness was as old as the settlement of Rolf, as old that is as
+the ducal power itself.  The great men of both these classes were
+alike hard to control.  A Norman baron of this age was well
+employed when he was merely rebelling against his prince or waging
+private war against a fellow baron.  What specially marks the time
+is the frequency of treacherous murders wrought by men of the
+highest rank, often on harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests.
+But victims were also found among those guardians of the young duke
+whose faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Norman
+nobility was not wholly corrupt.  One indeed was a foreign prince,
+Alan Count of the Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless
+through a daughter.  Two others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert
+Count of Eu, were irregular kinsmen of the duke.  All these were
+murdered, the Breton count by poison.  Such a childhood as this
+made William play the man while he was still a child.  The helpless
+boy had to seek for support of some kind.  He got together the
+chief men of his duchy, and took a new guardian by their advice.
+But it marks the state of things that the new guardian was one of
+the murderers of those whom he succeeded.  This was Ralph of Wacey,
+son of William's great-uncle, Archbishop Robert.  Murderer as he
+was, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully.  There are
+men who are careless of general moral obligations, but who will
+strictly carry out any charge which appeals to personal honour.
+Anyhow Ralph's guardianship brought with it a certain amount of
+calm.  But men, high in the young duke's favour, were still
+plotting against him, and they presently began to plot, not only
+against their prince but against their country.  The disaffected
+nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against young William in his
+lord King Henry of Paris.
+
+The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since much
+earlier times.  The king who owed his crown to William's father,
+and who could have no ground of offence against William himself,
+easily found good pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs.  It was
+not unnatural in the King of the French to wish to win back a sea-
+board which had been given up more than a hundred years before to
+an alien power, even though that power had, for much more than half
+of that time, acted more than a friendly part towards France.  It
+was not unnatural that the French people should cherish a strong
+national dislike to the Normans and a strong wish that Rouen should
+again be a French city.  But such motives were not openly avowed
+then any more than now.  The alleged ground was quite different.
+The counts of Chartres were troublesome neighbours to the duchy,
+and the castle of Tillieres had been built as a defence against
+them.  An advance of the King's dominions had made Tillieres a
+neighbour of France, and, as a neighbour, it was said to be a
+standing menace.  The King of the French, acting in concert with
+the disaffected party in Normandy, was a dangerous enemy, and the
+young Duke and his counsellors determined to give up Tillieres.
+Now comes the first distinct exercise of William's personal will.
+We are without exact dates, but the time can be hardly later than
+1040, when William was from twelve to thirteen years old.  At his
+special request, the defender of Tillieres, Gilbert Crispin, who at
+first held out against French and Normans alike, gave up the castle
+to Henry.  The castle was burned; the King promised not to repair
+it for four years.  Yet he is said to have entered Normandy, to
+have laid waste William's native district of Hiesmois, to have
+supplied a French garrison to a Norman rebel named Thurstan, who
+held the castle of Falaise against the Duke, and to have ended by
+restoring Tillieres as a menace against Normandy.  And now the boy
+whose destiny had made him so early a leader of men had to bear his
+first arms against the fortress which looked down on his birth-
+place.  Thurstan surrendered and went into banishment.  William
+could set down his own Falaise as the first of a long list of towns
+and castles which he knew how to win without shedding of blood.
+
+When we next see William's distinct personal action, he is still
+young, but no longer a child or even a boy.  At nineteen or
+thereabouts he is a wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdom
+are tried to the uttermost.  A few years of comparative quiet were
+chiefly occupied, as a quiet time in those days commonly was, with
+ecclesiastical affairs.  One of these specially illustrates the
+state of things with which William had to deal.  In 1042, when the
+Duke was about fourteen, Normandy adopted the Truce of God in its
+later shape.  It no longer attempted to establish universal peace;
+it satisfied itself with forbidding, under the strongest
+ecclesiastical censures, all private war and violence of any kind
+on certain days of the week.  Legislation of this kind has two
+sides.  It was an immediate gain if peace was really enforced for
+four days in the week; but that which was not forbidden on the
+other three could no longer be denounced as in itself evil.  We are
+told that in no land was the Truce more strictly observed than in
+Normandy.  But we may be sure that, when William was in the fulness
+of his power, the stern weight of the ducal arm was exerted to
+enforce peace on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as on Thursdays and
+Fridays.
+
+It was in the year 1047 that William's authority was most
+dangerously threatened and that he was first called on to show in
+all their fulness the powers that were in him.  He who was to be
+conqueror of Maine and conqueror of England was first to be
+conqueror of his own duchy.  The revolt of a large part of the
+country, contrasted with the firm loyalty of another part, throws a
+most instructive light on the internal state of the duchy.  There
+was, as there still is, a line of severance between the districts
+which formed the first grant to Rolf and those which were
+afterwards added.  In these last a lingering remnant of old
+Teutonic life had been called into fresh strength by new
+settlements from Scandinavia.  At the beginning of the reign of
+Richard the Fearless, Rouen, the French-speaking city, is
+emphatically contrasted with Bayeux, the once Saxon city and land,
+now the headquarters of the Danish speech.  At that stage the
+Danish party was distinctly a heathen party.  We are not told
+whether Danish was still spoken so late as the time of William's
+youth.  We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian gods still kept
+any avowed worshippers.  But the geographical limits of the revolt
+exactly fall in with the boundary which had once divided French and
+Danish speech, Christian and heathen worship.  There was a wide
+difference in feeling on the two sides of the Dive.  The older
+Norman settlements, now thoroughly French in tongue and manners,
+stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to the west rose against
+him.  Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to William; Saxon Bayeux
+and Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his enemies.
+
+When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised at
+the candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels.
+William was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a
+Frenchman.  This was William's cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose
+connexion with the ducal house was only by the spindle-side.  But
+his descent was of uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excuse
+for claiming the duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of the
+tanner.  By William he had been enriched with great possessions,
+among which was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle.  The
+real object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy.  William
+was to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of
+Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be left
+independent.  To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Cotentin
+revolted, their leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the
+Cotentin.  We are told that the mass of the people everywhere
+wished well to their duke; in the common sovereign lay their only
+chance of protection against their immediate lords.  But the lords
+had armed force of the land at their bidding.  They first tried to
+slay or seize the Duke himself, who chanced to be in the midst of
+them at Valognes.  He escaped; we hear a stirring tale of his
+headlong ride from Valognes to Falaise.  Safe among his own people,
+he planned his course of action.  He first sought help of the man
+who could give him most help, but who had most wronged him.  He
+went into France; he saw King Henry at Poissy, and the King engaged
+to bring a French force to William's help under his own command.
+
+This time Henry kept his promise.  The dismemberment of Normandy
+might have been profitable to France by weakening the power which
+had become so special an object of French jealousy; but with a king
+the common interest of princes against rebellious barons came
+first.  Henry came with a French army, and fought well for his ally
+on the field of Val-es-dunes.  Now came the Conqueror's first
+battle, a tourney of horsemen on an open table-land just within the
+land of the rebels between Caen and Mezidon.  The young duke fought
+well and manfully; but the Norman writers allow that it was French
+help that gained him the victory.  Yet one of the many anecdotes of
+the battle points to a source of strength which was always ready to
+tell for any lord against rebellious vassals.  One of the leaders
+of the revolt, Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred by
+the prayers of his knights, joined the Duke just before the battle.
+He had sworn to smite William wherever he found him, and he
+fulfilled his oath by giving the Duke a harmless blow with his
+glove.  How far an oath to do an unlawful act is binding is a
+question which came up again at another stage of William's life.
+
+The victory at Val-es-dunes was decisive, and the French King,
+whose help had done so much to win it, left William to follow it
+up.  He met with but little resistance except at the stronghold of
+Brionne.  Guy himself vanishes from Norman history.  William had
+now conquered his own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help.  For
+the rest of his Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies at
+home, but he had never to put down such a rebellion again as that
+of the lords of western Normandy.  That western Normandy, the
+truest Normandy, had to yield to the more thoroughly Romanized
+lands to the east.  The difference between them never again takes a
+political shape.  William was now lord of all Normandy, and able to
+put down all later disturbers of the peace.  His real reign now
+begins; from the age of nineteen or twenty, his acts are his own.
+According to his abiding practice, he showed himself a merciful
+conqueror.  Through his whole reign he shows a distinct
+unwillingness to take human life except in fair fighting on the
+battle-field.  No blood was shed after the victory of Val-es-dunes;
+one rebel died in bonds; the others underwent no harder punishment
+than payment of fines, giving of hostages, and destruction of their
+castles.  These castles were not as yet the vast and elaborate
+structures which arose in after days.  A single strong square
+tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by a
+ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous.  The possession of
+these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his prince
+and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours.  Every season of
+anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order
+brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace.
+
+
+Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been
+schooled for the rule of men.  He had now, in the rule of a smaller
+dominion, in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be
+schooled for the conquest and the rule of a greater dominion.
+William had the gifts of a born ruler, and he was in no way
+disposed to abuse them.  We know his rule in Normandy only through
+the language of panegyric; but the facts speak for themselves.  He
+made Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and
+flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland.
+He is set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler,
+the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce and
+of all that might profit his dominions.  For defensive wars, for
+wars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot blame
+him.  But his main duty lay at home.  He still had revolts to put
+down, and he put them down.  But to put them down was the first of
+good works.  He had to keep the peace of the land, to put some
+cheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom only an
+arm like his could put any cheek.  He had, in the language of his
+day, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment,
+whoever was the wrong-doer.  If a ruler did this first of duties
+well, much was easily forgiven him in other ways.  But William had
+as yet little to be forgiven.  Throughout life he steadily
+practised some unusual virtues.  His strict attention to religion
+was always marked.  And his religion was not that mere lavish
+bounty to the Church which was consistent with any amount of
+cruelty or license.  William's religion really influenced his life,
+public and private.  He set an unusual example of a princely
+household governed according to the rules of morality, and he dealt
+with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true reformer.  He
+did not, like so many princes of his age, make ecclesiastical
+preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good men from
+all quarters.  His own education is not likely to have received
+much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarer
+art of writing or the more usual one of reading; but both his
+promotion of learned churchmen and the care given to the education
+of some of his children show that he at least valued the best
+attainments of his time.  Had William's whole life been spent in
+the duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely, defending it
+manfully, the world might never have known him for one of its
+foremost men, but his life on that narrower field would have been
+useful and honourable almost without a drawback.  It was the fatal
+temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial
+aggrandizement, which enabled him fully to show the powers that
+were in him, but which at the same time led to his moral
+degradation.  The defender of his own land became the invader of
+other lands, and the invader could not fail often to sink into the
+oppressor.  Each step in his career as Conqueror was a step
+downwards.  Maine was a neighbouring land, a land of the same
+speech, a land which, if the feelings of the time could have
+allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost nothing by an
+union with Normandy.  England, a land apart, a land of speech,
+laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was
+in another case.  There the Conqueror was driven to be the
+oppressor.  Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further
+wrong.
+
+With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider,
+on which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing
+to do.  It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the
+English succession may have entered his mind or that of his
+advisers.  When William began his real reign after Val-es-dunes,
+Norman influence was high in England.  Edward the Confessor had
+spent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways and
+the company of Normans and other men of French speech.  Strangers
+from the favoured lands held endless posts in Church and State;
+above all, Robert of Jumieges, first Bishop of London and then
+Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's special favourite and
+adviser.  These men may have suggested the thought of William's
+succession very early.  On the other hand, at this time it was by
+no means clear that Edward might not leave a son of his own.  He
+had been only a few years married, and his alleged vow of chastity
+is very doubtful.  William's claim was of the flimsiest kind.  By
+English custom the king was chosen out of a single kingly house,
+and only those who were descended from kings in the male line were
+counted as members of that house.  William was not descended, even
+in the female line, from any English king; his whole kindred with
+Edward was that Edward's mother Emma, a daughter of Richard the
+Fearless, was William's great-aunt.  Such a kindred, to say nothing
+of William's bastardy, could give no right to the crown according
+to any doctrine of succession that ever was heard of.  It could at
+most point him out as a candidate for adoption, in case the
+reigning king should be disposed and allowed to choose his
+successor.  William or his advisers may have begun to weigh this
+chance very early; but all that is really certain is that William
+was a friend and favourite of his elder kinsman, and that events
+finally brought his succession to the English crown within the
+range of things that might be.
+
+But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond
+the bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his
+great continental conquest.  William's first war out of Normandy
+was waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count
+of Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine.  William undoubtedly owed
+a debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-es-
+dunes, and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjou
+and Normandy.  Both powers asserted rights over the intermediate
+land of Maine.  In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in a
+war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague tales of his
+exploits.  The really instructive part of the story deals with two
+border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine.  Alencon lay
+on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy.
+Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy.  The town was a
+lordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power and
+wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of
+Normandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than with
+ordinary nobles.  The story went that William Talvas, lord of
+Belleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in his
+cradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame.  Such
+a tale set forth the noblest side of William's character, as the
+man who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he who
+cursed him.  The possessions of William Talvas passed through his
+daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great part
+in William's history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, not
+of their lord, of which we hear just now.  They willingly admitted
+an Angevin garrison.  William in return laid siege to Domfront on
+the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maine
+against Normandy.  A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won
+for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the
+autumn and winter (1048-49).  One tale specially illustrates more
+than one point in the feelings of the time.  The two princes,
+William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other
+notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be
+mistaken.  The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see
+that William himself in his younger days was touched by it.  But we
+see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown.  Geoffrey and his
+host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in
+the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon.
+The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth.
+They hung out skins, and shouted, "Hides for the Tanner."  Personal
+insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of William
+was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from his
+usual moderation towards conquered enemies.  He swore that the men
+who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose
+branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife.  The town was taken
+by assault, and William kept his oath.  The castle held out; the
+hands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alencon were
+thrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison to
+surrender on promise of safety for life and limb.  The defenders of
+Domfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their arms
+as well as their lives and limbs.  William had thus won back his
+own rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his first
+conquest.  He went farther south, and fortified another castle at
+Ambrieres; but Ambrieres was only a temporary conquest.  Domfront
+has ever since been counted as part of Normandy.  But, as
+ecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of
+an earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great French
+Revolution in the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.
+
+
+William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was
+before long to show himself in England, though not yet as
+conqueror.  If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still in
+this interval to complete his conquest of his own duchy by securing
+the surrender of Brionne; and two other events, both
+characteristic, one of them memorable, fill up the same time.
+William now banished a kinsman of his own name, who held the great
+county of Mortain, Moretoliam or Moretonium, in the diocese of
+Avranches, which must be carefully distinguished from Mortagne-en-
+Perche, Mauritania or Moretonia in the diocese of Seez.  This act,
+of somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds.  First,
+the accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poor
+serving-knight of his own, but who became the forefather of a house
+which plays a great part in English history, Robert surnamed the
+Bigod.  Secondly, the vacant county was granted by William to his
+own half-brother Robert.  He had already in 1048 bestowed the
+bishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother Odo, who cannot at
+that time have been more than twelve years old.  He must therefore
+have held the see for a good while without consecration, and at no
+time of his fifty years' holding of it did he show any very
+episcopal merits.  This was the last case in William's reign of an
+old abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy had
+been turned into means of providing for members, often unworthy
+members, of the ducal family; and it is the only one for which
+William can have been personally responsible.  Both his brothers
+were thus placed very early in life among the chief men of
+Normandy, as they were in later years to be placed among the chief
+men of England.  But William's affection for his brothers, amiable
+as it may have been personally, was assuredly not among the
+brighter parts of his character as a sovereign.
+
+The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side
+of William's life.  The long story of his marriage now begins.  The
+date is fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held
+in 1049 by Pope Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders
+is forbidden to give his daughter to William the Norman.  This
+implies that the marriage was already thought of, and further that
+it was looked on as uncanonical.  The bride whom William sought,
+Matilda daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was connected with him by
+some tie of kindred or affinity which made a marriage between them
+unlawful by the rules of the Church.  But no genealogist has yet
+been able to find out exactly what the canonical hindrance was.  It
+is hard to trace the descent of William and Matilda up to any
+common forefather.  But the light which the story throws on
+William's character is the same in any case.  Whether he was
+seeking a wife or a kingdom, he would have his will, but he could
+wait for it.  In William's doubtful position, a marriage with the
+daughter of the Count of Flanders would be useful to him in many
+ways; and Matilda won her husband's abiding love and trust.
+Strange tales are told of William's wooing.  Tales are told also of
+Matilda's earlier love for the Englishman Brihtric, who is said to
+have found favour in her eyes when he came as envoy from England to
+her father's court.  All that is certain is that the marriage had
+been thought of and had been forbidden before the next important
+event in William's life that we have to record.
+
+Was William's Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopes
+of succession to the English crown?  Had there been any available
+bride for him in England, it might have been for his interest to
+seek for her there.  But it should be noticed, though no ancient
+writer points out the fact, that Matilda was actually descended
+from Alfred in the female line; so that William's children, though
+not William himself, had some few drops of English blood in their
+veins.  William or his advisers, in weighing every chance which
+might help his interests in the direction of England, may have
+reckoned this piece of rather ancient genealogy among the
+advantages of a Flemish alliance.  But it is far more certain that,
+between the forbidding of the marriage and the marriage itself, a
+direct hope of succession to the English crown had been opened to
+the Norman duke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--WILLIAM'S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND--A.D. 1051-1052
+
+
+
+While William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Norman
+influence in England had risen to its full height.  The king was
+surrounded by foreign favourites.  The only foreign earl was his
+nephew Ralph of Mentes, the son of his sister Godgifu.  But three
+chief bishoprics were held by Normans, Robert of Canterbury,
+William of London, and Ulf of Dorchester.  William bears a good
+character, and won the esteem of Englishmen; but the unlearned Ulf
+is emphatically said to have done "nought bishoplike."  Smaller
+preferments in Church and State, estates in all parts of the
+kingdom, were lavishly granted to strangers.  They built castles,
+and otherwise gave offence to English feeling.  Archbishop Robert,
+above all, was ever plotting against Godwine, Earl of the West-
+Saxons, the head of the national party.  At last, in the autumn of
+1051, the national indignation burst forth.  The immediate occasion
+was a visit paid to the King by Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had
+just married the widowed Countess Godgifu.  The violent dealings of
+his followers towards the burghers of Dover led to resistance on
+their part, and to a long series of marches and negotiations, which
+ended in the banishment of Godwine and his son, and the parting of
+his daughter Edith, the King's wife, from her husband.  From
+October 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own way in
+England.  And during that time King Edward received a visitor of
+greater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person of
+his cousin from Rouen.
+
+Of his visit we only read that "William Earl came from beyond sea
+with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and as
+many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again."
+Another account adds that William received great gifts from the
+King.  But William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as
+his lord; he must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act
+of homage, and there is no time but this at which we can conceive
+such an act being done.  Now for what was the homage paid?  Homage
+was often paid on very trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of
+allegiance often followed.  No such conflict was likely to arise if
+the Duke of the Normans, already the man of the King of the French
+for his duchy, became the man of the King of the English on any
+other ground.  Betwixt England and France there was as yet no
+enmity or rivalry.  England and France became enemies afterwards
+because the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans were
+one person.  And this visit, this homage, was the first step
+towards making the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans
+the same person.  The claim William had to the English crown rested
+mainly on an alleged promise of the succession made by Edward.
+This claim is not likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood.
+That Edward did make some promise to William--as that Harold, at a
+later stage, did take some oath to William--seems fully proved by
+the fact that, while such Norman statements as could be denied were
+emphatically denied by the English writers, on these two points the
+most patriotic Englishmen, the strongest partisans of Harold, keep
+a marked silence.  We may be sure therefore that some promise was
+made; for that promise a time must be found, and no time seems
+possible except this time of William's visit to Edward.  The date
+rests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement.
+Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when William
+and Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward was
+many years older than William.  The only possible moment earlier
+than the visit was when Edward was elected king in 1042.  Before
+that time he could hardly have thought of disposing of a kingdom
+which was not his, and at that time he might have looked forward to
+leaving sons to succeed him.  Still less could the promise have
+been made later than the visit.  From 1053 to the end of his life
+Edward was under English influences, which led him first to send
+for his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in the end
+to make a recommendation in favour of Harold.  But in 1051-52
+Edward, whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope
+of children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the
+only time in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he
+and William met face to face.  The only difficulty is one to which
+no contemporary writer makes any reference.  If Edward wished to
+dispose of his crown in favour of one of his French-speaking
+kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he might more naturally
+have thought.  His own nephew Ralph was living in England and
+holding an English earldom.  He had the advantage over both William
+and his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a reigning
+prince elsewhere.  We can only say that there is evidence that
+Edward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he ever
+thought of Ralph.  And, except the tie of nearer kindred,
+everything would suggest William rather than Ralph.  The personal
+comparison is almost grotesque; and Edward's early associations and
+the strongest influences around him, were not vaguely French but
+specially Norman.  Archbishop Robert would plead for his own native
+sovereign only.  In short, we may be as nearly sure as we can be of
+any fact for which there is no direct authority, that Edward's
+promise to William was made at the time of William's visit to
+England, and that William's homage to Edward was done in the
+character of a destined successor to the English crown.
+
+William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandy
+a king expectant.  But the value of his hopes, to the value of the
+promise made to him, are quite another matter.  Most likely they
+were rated on both sides far above their real value.  King and duke
+may both have believed that they were making a settlement which the
+English nation was bound to respect.  If so, Edward at least was
+undeceived within a few months.
+
+
+The notion of a king disposing of his crown by his own act belongs
+to the same range of ideas as the law of strict hereditary
+succession.  It implies that kingship is a possession and not an
+office.  Neither the heathen nor the Christian English had ever
+admitted that doctrine; but it was fast growing on the continent.
+Our forefathers had always combined respect for the kingly house
+with some measure of choice among the members of that house.
+Edward himself was not the lawful heir according to the notions of
+a modern lawyer; for he was chosen while the son of his elder
+brother was living.  Every English king held his crown by the gift
+of the great assembly of the nation, though the choice of the
+nation was usually limited to the descendants of former kings, and
+though the full-grown son of the late king was seldom opposed.
+Christianity had strengthened the election principle.  The king
+lost his old sanctity as the son of Woden; he gained a new sanctity
+as the Lord's anointed.  But kingship thereby became more
+distinctly an office, a great post, like a bishopric, to which its
+holder had to be lawfully chosen and admitted by solemn rites.  But
+of that office he could be lawfully deprived, nor could he hand it
+on to a successor either according to his own will or according to
+any strict law of succession.  The wishes of the late king, like
+the wishes of the late bishop, went for something with the
+electors.  But that was all.  All that Edward could really do for
+his kinsmen was to promise to make, when the time came, a
+recommendation to the Witan in his favour.  The Witan might then
+deal as they thought good with a recommendation so unusual as to
+choose to the kingship of England a man who was neither a native
+nor a conqueror of England nor the descendant of any English king.
+
+When the time came, Edward did make a recommendation to the Witan,
+but it was not in favour of William.  The English influences under
+which he was brought during his last fourteen years taught him
+better what the law of England was and what was the duty of an
+English king.  But at the time of William's visit Edward may well
+have believed that he could by his own act settle his crown on his
+Norman kinsman as his undoubted successor in case he died without a
+son.  And it may be that Edward was bound by a vow not to leave a
+son.  And if Edward so thought, William naturally thought so yet
+more; he would sincerely believe himself to be the lawful heir of
+the crown of England, the sole lawful successor, except in one
+contingency which was perhaps impossible and certainly unlikely.
+
+The memorials of these times, so full on some points, are meagre on
+others.  Of those writers who mention the bequest or promise none
+mention it at any time when it is supposed to have happened; they
+mention it at some later time when it began to be of practical
+importance.  No English writer speaks of William's claim till the
+time when he was about practically to assert it; no Norman writer
+speaks of it till he tells the tale of Harold's visit and oath to
+William.  We therefore cannot say how far the promise was known
+either in England or on the continent.  But it could not be kept
+altogether hid, even if either party wished it to be hid.  English
+statesmen must have known of it, and must have guided their policy
+accordingly, whether it was generally known in the country or not.
+William's position, both in his own duchy and among neighbouring
+princes, would be greatly improved if he could be looked upon as a
+future king.  As heir to the crown of England, he may have more
+earnestly wooed the descendant of former wearers of the crown; and
+Matilda and her father may have looked more favourably on a suitor
+to whom the crown of England was promised.  On the other hand, the
+existence of such a foreign claimant made it more needful than ever
+for Englishmen to be ready with an English successor, in the royal
+house or out of it, the moment the reigning king should pass away.
+
+
+It was only for a short time that William could have had any
+reasonable hope of a peaceful succession.  The time of Norman
+influence in England was short.  The revolution of September 1052
+brought Godwine back, and placed the rule of England again in
+English hands.  Many Normans were banished, above all Archbishop
+Robert and Bishop Ulf.  The death of Godwine the next year placed
+the chief power in the hands of his son Harold.  This change
+undoubtedly made Edward more disposed to the national cause.  Of
+Godwine, the man to whom he owed his crown, he was clearly in awe;
+to Godwine's sons he was personally attached.  We know not how
+Edward was led to look on his promise to William as void.  That he
+was so led is quite plain.  He sent for his nephew the AEtheling
+Edward from Hungary, clearly as his intended successor.  When the
+AEtheling died in 1057, leaving a son under age, men seem to have
+gradually come to look to Harold as the probable successor.  He
+clearly held a special position above that of an ordinary earl; but
+there is no need to suppose any formal act in his favour till the
+time of the King's death, January 5, 1066.  On his deathbed Edward
+did all that he legally could do on behalf of Harold by
+recommending him to the Witan for election as the next king.  That
+he then either made a new or renewed an old nomination in favour of
+William is a fable which is set aside by the witness of the
+contemporary English writers.  William's claim rested wholly on
+that earlier nomination which could hardly have been made at any
+other time than his visit to England.
+
+
+We have now to follow William back to Normandy, for the remaining
+years of his purely ducal reign.  The expectant king had doubtless
+thoughts and hopes which he had not had before.  But we can guess
+at them only:  they are not recorded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY--A.D. 1052-1063
+
+
+
+If William came back from England looking forward to a future
+crown, the thought might even then flash across his mind that he
+was not likely to win that crown without fighting for it.  As yet
+his business was still to fight for the duchy of Normandy.  But he
+had now to fight, not to win his duchy, but only to keep it.  For
+five years he had to strive both against rebellious subjects and
+against invading enemies, among whom King Henry of Paris is again
+the foremost.  Whatever motives had led the French king to help
+William at Val-es-dunes had now passed away.  He had fallen back on
+his former state of abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke.
+But this short period definitely fixed the position of Normandy and
+her duke in Gaul and in Europe.  At its beginning William is still
+the Bastard of Falaise, who may or may not be able to keep himself
+in the ducal chair, his right to which is still disputed.  At the
+end of it, if he is not yet the Conqueror and the Great, he has
+shown all the gifts that were needed to win him either name.  He is
+the greatest vassal of the French crown, a vassal more powerful
+than the overlord whose invasions of his duchy he has had to drive
+back.
+
+These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his
+allies fall into two periods.  At first Henry appears in Normandy
+as the supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke.  But
+revolts are personal and local; there is no rebellion like that
+which was crushed at Val-es-dunes, spreading over a large part of
+the duchy.  In the second period, the invaders have no such
+starting-point.  There are still traitors; there are still rebels;
+but all that they can do is to join the invaders after they have
+entered the land.  William is still only making his way to the
+universal good will of his duchy:  but he is fast making it.
+
+There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed
+date, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053.  The
+rebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended
+the castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishment
+in France.  But the year that followed William's visit to England
+saw the far more memorable revolt of William Count of Arques.  He
+had drawn the Duke's suspicions on him, and he had to receive a
+ducal garrison in his great fortress by Dieppe.  But the garrison
+betrayed the castle to its own master.  Open revolt and havoc
+followed, in which Count William was supported by the king and by
+several other princes.  Among them was Ingelram Count of Ponthieu,
+husband of the duke's sister Adelaide.  Another enemy was Guy Count
+of Gascony, afterwards Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine.  What
+quarrel a prince in the furthest corner of Gaul could have with the
+Duke of the Normans does not appear; but neither Count William nor
+his allies could withstand the loyal Normans and their prince.
+Count Ingelram was killed; the other princes withdrew to devise
+greater efforts against Normandy.  Count William lost his castle
+and part of his estates, and left the duchy of his free will.  The
+Duke's politic forbearance at last won him the general good will of
+his subjects.  We hear of no more open revolts till that of
+William's own son many years after.  But the assaults of foreign
+enemies, helped sometimes by Norman traitors, begin again the next
+year on a greater scale.
+
+
+William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space.  He
+had doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his
+marriage with Matilda of Flanders.  Notwithstanding the decree of a
+Pope and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage was
+celebrated, not very long after William's return to Normandy, in
+the year of the revolt of William of Arques.  In the course of the
+year 1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontier
+at Eu, and there she became the bride of William.  We know not what
+emboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particular
+time, or what led Baldwin to consent to it.  If it was suggested by
+the imprisonment of Pope Leo by William's countrymen in Italy, in
+the hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the
+captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed.  The marriage raised
+much opposition in Normandy.  It was denounced by Archbishop Malger
+of Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques.  His
+character certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same
+act in a saint would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness.
+Presently, whether for his faults or for his merits, Malger was
+deposed in a synod of the Norman Church, and William found him a
+worthier successor in the learned and holy Maurilius.  But a
+greater man than Malger also opposed the marriage, and the
+controversy thus introduces us to one who fills a place second only
+to that of William himself in the Norman and English history of the
+time.
+
+This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the model
+monk, the ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newly
+founded abbey of Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellors
+of the Duke.  As duke and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop,
+William and Lanfranc ruled side by side, each helping the work of
+the other till the end of their joint lives.  Once only, at this
+time, was their friendship broken for a moment.  Lanfranc spoke
+against the marriage, and ventured to rebuke the Duke himself.
+William's wrath was kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into banishment
+and took a baser revenge by laying waste part of the lands of the
+abbey.  But the quarrel was soon made up.  Lanfranc presently left
+Normandy, not as a banished man, but as the envoy of its sovereign,
+commissioned to work for the confirmation of the marriage at the
+papal court.  He worked, and his work was crowned with success, but
+not with speedy success.  It was not till six years after the
+marriage, not till the year 1059, that Lanfranc obtained the wished
+for confirmation, not from Leo, but from his remote successor
+Nicolas the Second.  The sin of those who had contracted the
+unlawful union was purged by various good works, among which the
+foundation of the two stately abbeys of Caen was conspicuous.
+
+This story illustrates many points in the character of William and
+of his time.  His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matter
+of marriage or of any other.  But he does not hurry matters; he
+waits for a favourable opportunity.  Something, we know not what,
+must have made the year 1053 more favourable than the year 1049.
+We mark also William's relations to the Church.  He is at no time
+disposed to submit quietly to the bidding of the spiritual power,
+when it interferes with his rights or even when it crosses his
+will.  Yet he is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; he
+promotes men like Maurilius and Lanfranc; perhaps he is not
+displeased when the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline, in the
+case of Malger, frees him from a troublesome censor.  But the worse
+side of him also comes out.  William could forgive rebels, but he
+could not bear the personal rebuke even of his friend.  Under this
+feeling he punishes a whole body of men for the offence of one.  To
+lay waste the lands of Bec for the rebuke of Lanfranc was like an
+ordinary prince of the time; it was unlike William, if he had not
+been stirred up by a censure which touched his wife as well as
+himself.  But above all, the bargain between William and Lanfranc
+is characteristic of the man and the age.  Lanfranc goes to Rome to
+support a marriage which he had censured in Normandy.  But there is
+no formal inconsistency, no forsaking of any principle.  Lanfranc
+holds an uncanonical marriage to be a sin, and he denounces it.  He
+does not withdraw his judgement as to its sinfulness.  He simply
+uses his influence with a power that can forgive the sin to get it
+forgiven.
+
+While William's marriage was debated at Rome, he had to fight hard
+in Normandy.  His warfare and his negotiations ended about the same
+time, and the two things may have had their bearing on one another.
+William had now to undergo a new form of trial.  The King of the
+French had never put forth his full strength when he was simply
+backing Norman rebels.  William had now, in two successive
+invasions, to withstand the whole power of the King, and of as many
+of his vassals as the King could bring to his standard.  In the
+first invasion, in 1054, the Norman writers speak rhetorically of
+warriors from Burgundy, Auvergne, and Gascony; but it is hard to
+see any troops from a greater distance than Bourges.  The princes
+who followed Henry seem to have been only the nearer vassals of the
+Crown.  Chief among them are Theobald Count of Chartres, of a house
+of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to
+be often heard of again.  If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his
+subjects from Tours were also there.  Normandy was to be invaded on
+two sides, on both banks of the Seine.  The King and his allies
+sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the
+older and the more thoroughly French part.  No attack seems to have
+been designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin.  William was to be
+allowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had to
+fight when the King was his ally at Val-es-dunes.
+
+The two armies entered Normandy; that which was to act on the left
+of the Seine was led by the King, the other by his brother Odo.
+Against the King William made ready to act himself; eastern
+Normandy was left to its own loyal nobles.  But all Normandy was
+now loyal; the men of the Saxon and Danish lands were as ready to
+fight for their duke against the King as they had been to fight
+against King and Duke together.  But William avoided pitched
+battles; indeed pitched battles are rare in the continental warfare
+of the time.  War consists largely in surprises, and still more in
+the attack and defence of fortified places.  The plan of William's
+present campaign was wholly defensive; provisions and cattle were
+to be carried out of the French line of march; the Duke on his
+side, the other Norman leaders on the other side, were to watch the
+enemy and attack them at any favourable moment.  The commanders
+east of the Seine, Count Robert of Eu, Hugh of Gournay, William
+Crispin, and Walter Giffard, found their opportunity when the
+French had entered the unfortified town of Mortemer and had given
+themselves up to revelry.  Fire and sword did the work.  The whole
+French army was slain, scattered, or taken prisoners.  Ode escaped;
+Guy of Ponthieu was taken.  The Duke's success was still easier.
+The tale runs that the news from Mortemer, suddenly announced to
+the King's army in the dead of the night, struck them with panic,
+and led to a hasty retreat out of the land.
+
+This campaign is truly Norman; it is wholly unlike the simple
+warfare of England.  A traitorous Englishman did nothing or helped
+the enemy; a patriotic Englishman gave battle to the enemy the
+first time he had a chance.  But no English commander of the
+eleventh century was likely to lay so subtle a plan as this, and,
+if he had laid such a plan, he would hardly have found an English
+army able to carry it out.  Harold, who refused to lay waste a rood
+of English ground, would hardly have looked quietly on while many
+roods of English ground were wasted by the enemy.  With all the
+valour of the Normans, what before all things distinguished them
+from other nations was their craft.  William could indeed fight a
+pitched battle when a pitched battle served his purpose; but he
+could control himself, he could control his followers, even to the
+point of enduring to look quietly on the havoc of their own land
+till the right moment.  He who could do this was indeed practising
+for his calling as Conqueror.  And if the details of the story,
+details specially characteristic, are to be believed, William
+showed something also of that grim pleasantry which was another
+marked feature in the Norman character.  The startling message
+which struck the French army with panic was deliberately sent with
+that end.  The messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, and, with a
+voice as from another world, bids the French awake; they are
+sleeping too long; let them go and bury their friends who are lying
+dead at Mortemer.  These touches bring home to us the character of
+the man and the people with whom our forefathers had presently to
+deal.  William was the greatest of his race, but he was essentially
+of his race; he was Norman to the backbone.
+
+Of the French army one division had been surprised and cut to
+pieces, the other had left Normandy without striking a blow.  The
+war was not yet quite over; the French still kept Tillieres;
+William accordingly fortified the stronghold of Breteuil as a cheek
+upon it.  And he entrusted the command to a man who will soon be
+memorable, his personal friend William, son of his old guardian
+Osbern.  King Henry was now glad to conclude a peace on somewhat
+remarkable terms.  William had the king's leave to take what he
+could from Count Geoffrey of Anjou.  He now annexed Cenomannian--
+that is just now Angevin--territory at more points than one, but
+chiefly on the line of his earlier advances to Domfront and
+Ambrieres.  Ambrieres had perhaps been lost; for William now sent
+Geoffrey a challenge to come on the fortieth day.  He came on the
+fortieth day, and found Ambrieres strongly fortified and occupied
+by a Norman garrison.  With Geoffrey came the Breton prince Ode,
+and William or Peter Duke of Aquitaine.  They besieged the castle;
+but Norman accounts add that they all fled on William's approach to
+relieve it.
+
+Three years of peace now followed, but in 1058 King Henry, this
+time in partnership with Geoffrey of Anjou, ventured another
+invasion of Normandy.  He might say that he had never been fairly
+beaten in his former campaign, but that he had been simply cheated
+out of the land by Norman wiles.  This time he had a second
+experience of Norman wiles and of Norman strength too.  King and
+Count entered the land and ravaged far and wide.  William, as
+before, allowed the enemy to waste the land.  He watched and
+followed them till he found a favourable moment for attack.  The
+people in general zealously helped the Duke's schemes, but some
+traitors of rank were still leagued with the Count of Anjou.  While
+William bided his time, the invaders burned Caen.  This place, so
+famous in Norman history, was not one of the ancient cities of the
+land.  It was now merely growing into importance, and it was as yet
+undefended by walls or castle.  But when the ravagers turned
+eastward, William found the opportunity that he had waited for.  As
+the French were crossing the ford of Varaville on the Dive, near
+the mouth of that river, he came suddenly on them, and slaughtered
+a large part of the army under the eyes of the king who had already
+crossed.  The remnant marched out of Normandy.
+
+Henry now made peace, and restored Tillieres.  Not long after, in
+1060, the King died, leaving his young son Philip, who had been
+already crowned, as his successor, under the guardianship of
+William's father-in-law Baldwin.  Geoffrey of Anjou and William of
+Aquitaine also died, and the Angevin power was weakened by the
+division of Geoffrey's dominions between his nephews.  William's
+position was greatly strengthened, now that France, under the new
+regent, had become friendly, while Anjou was no longer able to do
+mischief.  William had now nothing to fear from his neighbours, and
+the way was soon opened for his great continental conquest.  But
+what effect had these events on William's views on England?  About
+the time of the second French invasion of Normandy Earl Harold
+became beyond doubt the first man in England, and for the first
+time a chance of the royal succession was opened to him.  In 1057,
+the year before Varaville, the AEtheling Edward, the King's
+selected successor, died soon after his coming to England; in the
+same year died the King's nephew Earl Ralph and Leofric Earl of the
+Mercians, the only Englishmen whose influence could at all compare
+with that of Harold.  Harold's succession now became possible; it
+became even likely, if Edward should die while Edgar the son of the
+AEtheling was still under age.  William had no shadow of excuse for
+interfering, but he doubtless was watching the internal affairs of
+England.  Harold was certainly watching the affairs of Gaul.  About
+this time, most likely in the year 1058, he made a pilgrimage to
+Rome, and on his way back he looked diligently into the state of
+things among the various vassals of the French crown.  His exact
+purpose is veiled in ambiguous language; but we can hardly doubt
+that his object was to contract alliances with the continental
+enemies of Normandy.  Such views looked to the distant future, as
+William had as yet been guilty of no unfriendly act towards
+England.  But it was well to come to an understanding with King
+Henry, Count Geoffrey, and Duke William of Aquitaine, in case a
+time should come when their interests and those of England would be
+the same.  But the deaths of all those princes must have put an end
+to all hopes of common action between England and any Gaulish
+power.  The Emperor Henry also, the firm ally of England, was dead.
+It was now clear that, if England should ever have to withstand a
+Norman attack, she would have to withstand it wholly by her own
+strength, or with such help as she might find among the kindred
+powers of the North.
+
+
+William's great continental conquest is drawing nigh; but between
+the campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came the
+tardy papal confirmation of William's marriage.  The Duke and
+Duchess, now at last man and wife in the eye of the Church, began
+to carry out the works of penance which were allotted to them.  The
+abbeys of Caen, William's Saint Stephen's, Matilda's Holy Trinity,
+now began to arise.  Yet, at this moment of reparation, one or two
+facts seem to place William's government of his duchy in a less
+favourable light than usual.  The last French invasion was followed
+by confiscations and banishments among the chief men of Normandy.
+Roger of Montgomery and his wife Mabel, who certainly was capable
+of any deed of blood or treachery, are charged with acting as false
+accusers.  We see also that, as late as the day of Varaville, there
+were Norman traitors.  Robert of Escalfoy had taken the Angevin
+side, and had defended his castle against the Duke.  He died in a
+strange way, after snatching an apple from the hand of his own
+wife.  His nephew Arnold remained in rebellion three years, and was
+simply required to go to the wars in Apulia.  It is hard to believe
+that the Duke had poisoned the apple, if poisoned it was; but
+finding treason still at work among his nobles, he may have too
+hastily listened to charges against men who had done him good
+service, and who were to do him good service again.
+
+Five years after the combat at Varaville, William really began to
+deserve, though not as yet to receive, the name of Conqueror.  For
+he now did a work second only to the conquest of England.  He won
+the city of Le Mans and the whole land of Maine.  Between the tale
+of Maine and the tale of England there is much of direct likeness.
+Both lands were won against the will of their inhabitants; but both
+conquests were made with an elaborate show of legal right.
+William's earlier conquests in Maine had been won, not from any
+count of Maine, but from Geoffrey of Anjou, who had occupied the
+country to the prejudice of two successive counts, Hugh and
+Herbert.  He had further imprisoned the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervase
+of the house of Belleme, though the King of the French had at his
+request granted to the Count of Anjou for life royal rights over
+the bishopric of Le Mans.  The bishops of Le Mans, who thus, unlike
+the bishops of Normandy, held their temporalities of the distant
+king and not of the local count, held a very independent position.
+The citizens of Le Mans too had large privileges and a high spirit
+to defend them; the city was in a marked way the head of the
+district.  Thus it commonly carried with it the action of the whole
+country.  In Maine there were three rival powers, the prince, the
+Church, and the people.  The position of the counts was further
+weakened by the claims to their homage made by the princes on
+either side of them in Normandy and Anjou; the position of the
+Bishop, vassal, till Gervase's late act, of the King only, was
+really a higher one.  Geoffrey had been received at Le Mans with
+the good will of the citizens, and both Bishop and Count sought
+shelter with William.  Gervase was removed from the strife by
+promotion to the highest place in the French kingdom, the
+archbishopric of Rheims.  The young Count Herbert, driven from his
+county, commended himself to William.  He became his man; he agreed
+to hold his dominions of him, and to marry one of his daughters.
+If he died childless, his father-in-law was to take the fief into
+his own hands.  But to unite the old and new dynasties, Herbert's
+youngest sister Margaret was to marry William's eldest son Robert.
+If female descent went for anything, it is not clear why Herbert
+passed by the rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, wife of
+Azo Marquess of Liguria, and Paula, wife of John of La Fleche on
+the borders of Maine and Anjou.  And sons both of Gersendis and of
+Paula did actually reign at Le Mans, while no child either of
+Herbert or of Margaret ever came into being.
+
+If Herbert ever actually got possession of his country, his
+possession of it was short.  He died in 1063 before either of the
+contemplated marriages had been carried out.  William therefore
+stood towards Maine as he expected to stand with regard to England.
+The sovereign of each country had made a formal settlement of his
+dominions in his favour.  It was to be seen whether those who were
+most immediately concerned would accept that settlement.  Was the
+rule either of Maine or of England to be handed over in this way,
+like a mere property, without the people who were to be ruled
+speaking their minds on the matter?  What the people of England
+said to this question in 1066 we shall hear presently; what the
+people of Maine said in 1063 we hear now.  We know not why they had
+submitted to the Angevin count; they had now no mind to merge their
+country in the dominions of the Norman duke.  The Bishop was
+neutral; but the nobles and the citizens of Le Mans were of one
+mind in refusing William's demand to be received as count by virtue
+of the agreement with Herbert.  They chose rulers for themselves.
+Passing by Gersendis and Paula and their sons, they sent for
+Herbert's aunt Biota and her husband Walter Count of Mantes.
+Strangely enough, Walter, son of Godgifu daughter of AEthelred, was
+a possible, though not a likely, candidate for the rule of England
+as well as of Maine.  The people of Maine are not likely to have
+thought of this bit of genealogy.  But it was doubtless present to
+the minds alike of William and of Harold.
+
+William thus, for the first but not for the last time, claimed the
+rule of a people who had no mind to have him as their ruler.  Yet,
+morally worthless as were his claims over Maine, in the merely
+technical way of looking at things, he had more to say than most
+princes have who annex the lands of their neighbours.  He had a
+perfectly good right by the terms of the agreement with Herbert.
+And it might be argued by any who admitted the Norman claim to the
+homage of Maine, that on the failure of male heirs the country
+reverted to the overlord.  Yet female succession was now coming in.
+Anjou had passed to the sons of Geoffrey's sister; it had not
+fallen back to the French king.  There was thus a twofold answer to
+William's claim, that Herbert could not grant away even the rights
+of his sisters, still less the rights of his people.  Still it was
+characteristic of William that he had a case that might be
+plausibly argued.  The people of Maine had fallen back on the old
+Teutonic right.  They had chosen a prince connected with the old
+stock, but who was not the next heir according to any rule of
+succession.  Walter was hardly worthy of such an exceptional
+honour; he showed no more energy in Maine than his brother Ralph
+had shown in England.  The city was defended by Geoffrey, lord of
+Mayenne, a valiant man who fills a large place in the local
+history.  But no valour or skill could withstand William's plan of
+warfare.  He invaded Maine in much the same sort in which he had
+defended Normandy.  He gave out that he wished to win Maine without
+shedding man's blood.  He fought no battles; he did not attack the
+city, which he left to be the last spot that should be devoured.
+He harried the open country, he occupied the smaller posts, till
+the citizens were driven, against Geoffrey's will, to surrender.
+William entered Le Mans; he was received, we are told, with joy.
+When men make the best of a bad bargain, they sometimes persuade
+themselves that they are really pleased.  William, as ever, shed no
+blood; he harmed none of the men who had become his subjects; but
+Le Mans was to be bridled; its citizens needed a castle and a
+Norman garrison to keep them in their new allegiance.  Walter and
+Biota surrendered their claims on Maine and became William's guests
+at Falaise.  Meanwhile Geoffrey of Mayenne refused to submit, and
+withstood the new Count of Maine in his stronghold.  William laid
+siege to Mayenne, and took it by the favoured Norman argument of
+fire.  All Maine was now in the hands of the Conqueror.
+
+William had now made a greater conquest than any Norman duke had
+made before him.  He had won a county and a noble city, and he had
+won them, in the ideas of his own age, with honour.  Are we to
+believe that he sullied his conquest by putting his late
+competitors, his present guests, to death by poison?  They died
+conveniently for him, and they died in his own house.  Such a death
+was strange; but strange things do happen.  William gradually came
+to shrink from no crime for which he could find a technical
+defence; but no advocate could have said anything on behalf of the
+poisoning of Walter and Biota.  Another member of the house of
+Maine, Margaret the betrothed of his son Robert, died about the
+same time; and her at least William had every motive to keep alive.
+One who was more dangerous than Walter, if he suffered anything,
+only suffered banishment.  Of Geoffrey of Mayenne we hear no more
+till William had again to fight for the possession of Maine.
+
+
+William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his power
+and fame as a continental prince.  In a conquest on Gaulish soil he
+had rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to make
+beyond sea.  Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventful
+in Normandy, still part us from William's second visit to our
+shores.  But in the course of these three years one event must have
+happened, which, without a blow being struck or a treaty being
+signed, did more for his hopes than any battle or any treaty.  At
+some unrecorded time, but at a time which must come within these
+years, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the guest and the man
+of William Duke of the Normans.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--HAROLD'S OATH TO WILLIAM--A.D. 1064?
+
+
+
+The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his
+chances of becoming lord of England also.  While our authorities
+enable us to put together a fairly full account of both Norman and
+English events, they throw no light on the way in which men in
+either land looked at events in the other.  Yet we might give much
+to know what William and Harold at this time thought of one
+another.  Nothing had as yet happened to make the two great rivals
+either national or personal enemies.  England and Normandy were at
+peace, and the great duke and the great earl had most likely had no
+personal dealings with one another.  They were rivals in the sense
+that each looked forward to succeed to the English crown whenever
+the reigning king should die.  But neither had as yet put forward
+his claim in any shape that the other could look on as any formal
+wrong to himself.  If William and Harold had ever met, it could
+have been only during Harold's journey in Gaul.  Whatever
+negotiations Harold made during that journey were negotiations
+unfriendly to William; still he may, in the course of that journey,
+have visited Normandy as well as France or Anjou.  It is hard to
+avoid the thought that the tale of Harold's visit to William, of
+his oath to William, arose out of something that happened on
+Harold's way back from his Roman pilgrimage.  To that journey we
+can give an approximate date.  Of any other journey we have no date
+and no certain detail.  We can say only that the fact that no
+English writer makes any mention of any such visit, of any such
+oath, is, under the circumstances, the strongest proof that the
+story of the visit and the oath has some kind of foundation.  Yet
+if we grant thus much, the story reads on the whole as if it
+happened a few years later than the English earl's return from
+Rome.
+
+It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit to
+Gaul, whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some time
+nearer to Edward's death than the year 1058.  The English writers
+are silent; the Norman writers give no date or impossible dates;
+they connect the visit with a war in Britanny; but that war is
+without a date.  We are driven to choose the year which is least
+rich in events in the English annals.  Harold could not have paid a
+visit of several months to Normandy either in 1063 or in 1065.  Of
+those years the first was the year of Harold's great war in Wales,
+when he found how the Britons might be overcome by their own arms,
+when he broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the Welsh kingdom
+to princes who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of King
+Edward.  Harold's visit to Normandy is said to have taken place in
+the summer and autumn mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065
+were taken up by the building and destruction of Harold's hunting-
+seat in Wales and by the greater events of the revolt and
+pacification of Northumberland.  But the year 1064 is a blank in
+the English annals till the last days of December, and no action of
+Harold's in that year is recorded.  It is therefore the only
+possible year among those just before Edward's death.  Harold's
+visit and oath to William may very well have taken place in that
+year; but that is all.
+
+We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visit
+or the nature of the oath.  We can say only that Harold did
+something which enabled William to charge him with perjury and
+breach of the duty of a vassal.  It is inconceivable in itself, and
+unlike the formal scrupulousness of William's character, to fancy
+that he made his appeal to all Christendom without any ground at
+all.  The Norman writers contradict one another so thoroughly in
+every detail of the story that we can look on no part of it as
+trustworthy.  Yet such a story can hardly have grown up so near to
+the alleged time without some kernel of truth in it.  And herein
+comes the strong corroborative witness that the English writers,
+denying every other charge against Harold, pass this one by without
+notice.  We can hardly doubt that Harold swore some oath to William
+which he did not keep.  More than this it would be rash to say
+except as an avowed guess.
+
+As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that year
+which is not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, we
+can only take that one among the Norman versions which is also not
+impossible.  All the main versions represent Harold as wrecked on
+the coast of Ponthieu, as imprisoned, according to the barbarous
+law of wreck, by Count Guy, and as delivered by the intervention of
+William.  If any part of the story is true, this is.  But as to the
+circumstances which led to the shipwreck there is no agreement.
+Harold assuredly was not sent to announce to William a devise of
+the crown in his favour made with the consent of the Witan of
+England and confirmed by the oaths of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, and
+Leofric.  Stigand became Archbishop in September 1052:  Godwine
+died at Easter 1053.  The devise must therefore have taken place,
+and Harold's journey must have taken place, within those few most
+unlikely months, the very time when Norman influence was
+overthrown.  Another version makes Harold go, against the King's
+warnings, to bring back his brother Wulfnoth and his nephew Hakon,
+who had been given as hostages on the return of Godwine, and had
+been entrusted by the King to the keeping of Duke William.  This
+version is one degree less absurd; but no such hostages are known
+to have been given, and if they were, the patriotic party, in the
+full swing of triumph, would hardly have allowed them to be sent to
+Normandy.  A third version makes Harold's presence the result of
+mere accident.  He is sailing to Wales or Flanders, or simply
+taking his pleasure in the Channel, when he is cast by a storm on
+the coast of Ponthieu.  Of these three accounts we may choose the
+third as the only one that is possible.  It is also one out of
+which the others may have grown, while it is hard to see how the
+third could have arisen out of either of the others.  Harold then,
+we may suppose, fell accidentally into the clutches of Guy, and was
+rescued from them, at some cost in ransom and in grants of land, by
+Guy's overlord Duke William.
+
+The whole story is eminently characteristic of William.  He would
+be honestly indignant at Guy's base treatment of Harold, and he
+would feel it his part as Guy's overlord to redress the wrong.  But
+he would also be alive to the advantage of getting his rival into
+his power on so honourable a pretext.  Simply to establish a claim
+to gratitude on the part of Harold would be something.  But he
+might easily do more, and, according to all accounts, he did more.
+Harold, we are told, as the Duke's friend and guest, returns the
+obligation under which the Duke has laid him by joining him in one
+or more expeditions against the Bretons.  The man who had just
+smitten the Bret-Welsh of the island might well be asked to fight,
+and might well be ready to fight, against the Bret-Welsh of the
+mainland.  The services of Harold won him high honour; he was
+admitted into the ranks of Norman knighthood, and engaged to marry
+one of William's daughters.  Now, at any time to which we can fix
+Harold's visit, all William's daughters must have been mere
+children.  Harold, on the other hand, seems to have been a little
+older than William.  Yet there is nothing unlikely in the
+engagement, and it is the one point in which all the different
+versions, contradicting each other on every other point, agree
+without exception.  Whatever else Harold promises, he promises
+this, and in some versions he does not promise anything else.
+
+Here then we surely have the kernel of truth round which a mass of
+fable, varying in different reports, has gathered.  On no other
+point is there any agreement.  The place is unfixed; half a dozen
+Norman towns and castles are made the scene of the oath.  The form
+of the oath is unfixed; in some accounts it is the ordinary oath of
+homage; in others it is an oath of fearful solemnity, taken on the
+holiest relics.  In one well-known account, Harold is even made to
+swear on hidden relics, not knowing on what he is swearing.  Here
+is matter for much thought.  To hold that one form of oath or
+promise is more binding than another upsets all true confidence
+between man and man.  The notion of the specially binding nature of
+the oath by relies assumes that, in case of breach of the oath,
+every holy person to whose relies despite has been done will become
+the personal enemy of the perjurer.  But the last story of all is
+the most instructive.  William's formal, and more than formal,
+religion abhorred a false oath, in himself or in another man.  But,
+so long as he keeps himself personally clear from the guilt, he
+does not scruple to put another man under special temptation, and,
+while believing in the power of the holy relics, he does not
+scruple to abuse them to a purpose of fraud.  Surely, if Harold did
+break his oath, the wrath of the saints would fall more justly on
+William.  Whether the tale be true or false, it equally illustrates
+the feelings of the time, and assuredly its truth or falsehood
+concerns the character of William far more than that of Harold.
+
+What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemn
+fashion or in any other, is left equally uncertain.  In any case he
+engages to marry a daughter of William--as to which daughter the
+statements are endless--and in most versions he engages to do
+something more.  He becomes the man of William, much as William had
+become the man of Edward.  He promises to give his sister in
+marriage to an unnamed Norman baron.  Moreover he promises to
+secure the kingdom of England for William at Edward's death.
+Perhaps he is himself to hold the kingdom or part of it under
+William; in any case William is to be the overlord; in the more
+usual story, William is to be himself the immediate king, with
+Harold as his highest and most favoured subject.  Meanwhile Harold
+is to act in William's interest, to receive a Norman garrison in
+Dover castle, and to build other castles at other points.  But no
+two stories agree, and not a few know nothing of anything beyond
+the promise of marriage.
+
+Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things,
+it must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him.
+If Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simply
+because he felt that he was practically in William's power, without
+any serious intention of keeping the oath.  If Harold took any such
+oath, he undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilt
+on his part lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it.  For
+he swore to do what he could not do, and what it would have been a
+crime to do, if he could.  If the King himself could not dispose of
+the crown, still less could the most powerful subject.  Harold
+could at most promise William his "vote and interest," whenever the
+election came.  But no one can believe that even Harold's influence
+could have obtained the crown for William.  His influence lay in
+his being the embodiment of the national feeling; for him to appear
+as the supporter of William would have been to lose the crown for
+himself without gaining it for William.  Others in England and in
+Scandinavia would have been glad of it.  And the engagements to
+surrender Dover castle and the like were simply engagements on the
+part of an English earl to play the traitor against England.  If
+William really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did so,
+not with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to put
+his competitor as far as possible in the wrong.  But most likely
+Harold swore only to something much simpler.  Next to the universal
+agreement about the marriage comes the very general agreement that
+Harold became William's man.  In these two statements we have
+probably the whole truth.  In those days men took the obligation of
+homage upon themselves very easily.  Homage was no degradation,
+even in the highest; a man often did homage to any one from whom he
+had received any great benefit, and Harold had received a very
+great benefit from William.  Nor did homage to a new lord imply
+treason to the old one.  Harold, delivered by William from Guy's
+dungeon, would be eager to do for William any act of friendship.
+The homage would be little more than binding himself in the
+strongest form so to do.  The relation of homage could be made to
+mean anything or nothing, as might be convenient.  The man might
+often understand it in one sense and the lord in another.  If
+Harold became the man of William, he would look on the act as
+little more than an expression of good will and gratitude towards
+his benefactor, his future father-in-law, his commander in the
+Breton war.  He would not look on it as forbidding him to accept
+the English crown if it were offered to him.  Harold, the man of
+Duke William, might become a king, if he could, just as William,
+the man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could.  As
+things went in those days, both the homage and the promise of
+marriage were capable of being looked on very lightly.
+
+But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William to
+put any such easy meaning on either promise.  The oath might, if
+needful, be construed very strictly, and William was disposed to
+construe it very strictly.  Harold had not promised William a
+crown, which was not his to promise; but he had promised to do that
+which might be held to forbid him to take a crown which William
+held to be his own.  If the man owed his lord any duty at all, it
+was surely his duty not to thwart his lord's wishes in such a
+matter.  If therefore, when the vacancy of the throne came, Harold
+took the crown himself, or even failed to promote William's claim
+to it, William might argue that he had not rightly discharged the
+duty of a man to his lord.  He could make an appeal to the world
+against the new king, as a perjured man, who had failed to help his
+lord in the matter where his lord most needed his help.  And, if
+the oath really had been taken on relics of special holiness, he
+could further appeal to the religious feelings of the time against
+the man who had done despite to the saints.  If he should be driven
+to claim the crown by arms, he could give the war the character of
+a crusade.  All this in the end William did, and all this, we may
+be sure, he looked forward to doing, when he caused Harold to
+become his man.  The mere obligation of homage would, in the
+skilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work on
+men's minds, as William wished to work on them.  To Harold
+meanwhile and to those in England who heard the story, the
+engagement would not seem to carry any of these consequences.  The
+mere homage then, which Harold could hardly refuse, would answer
+William's purpose nearly as well as any of these fuller obligations
+which Harold would surely have refused.  And when a man older than
+William engaged to marry William's child-daughter, we must bear in
+mind the lightness with which such promises were made.  William
+could not seriously expect that this engagement would be kept, if
+anything should lead Harold to another marriage.  The promise was
+meant simply to add another count to the charges against Harold
+when the time should come.  Yet on this point it is not clear that
+the oath was broken.  Harold undoubtedly married Ealdgyth, daughter
+of AElfgar and widow of Gruffydd, and not any daughter of William.
+But in one version Harold is made to say that the daughter of
+William whom he had engaged to marry was dead.  And that one of
+William's daughters did die very early there seems little doubt.
+
+
+Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan.
+The Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtler
+still.  In this long series of schemes and negotiations which led
+to the conquest of England, we are dealing with two of the greatest
+recorded masters of statecraft.  We may call their policy dishonest
+and immoral, and so it was.  But it was hardly more dishonest and
+immoral than most of the diplomacy of later times.  William's
+object was, without any formal breach of faith on his own part, to
+entrap Harold into an engagement which might be understood in
+different senses, and which, in the sense which William chose to
+put upon it, Harold was sure to break.  Two men, themselves of
+virtuous life, a rigid churchman and a layman of unusual religious
+strictness, do not scruple to throw temptation in the way of a
+fellow man in the hope that he will yield to that temptation.  They
+exact a promise, because the promise is likely to be broken, and
+because its breach would suit their purposes.  Through all
+William's policy a strong regard for formal right as he chose to
+understand formal right, is not only found in company with much
+practical wrong, but is made the direct instrument of carrying out
+that wrong.  Never was trap more cunningly laid than that in which
+William now entangled Harold.  Never was greater wrong done without
+the breach of any formal precept of right.  William and Lanfranc
+broke no oath themselves, and that was enough for them.  But it was
+no sin in their eyes to beguile another into engagements which he
+would understand in one way and they in another; they even, as
+their admirers tell the story, beguile him into engagements at once
+unlawful and impossible, because their interests would be promoted
+by his breach of those engagements.  William, in short, under the
+spiritual guidance of Lanfranc, made Harold swear because he
+himself would gain by being able to denounce Harold as perjured.
+
+The moral question need not be further discussed; but we should
+greatly like to know how far the fact of Harold's oath, whatever
+its nature, was known in England?  On this point we have no
+trustworthy authority.  The English writers say nothing about the
+whole matter; to the Norman writers this point was of no interest.
+No one mentions this point, except Harold's romantic biographer at
+the beginning of the thirteenth century.  His statements are of no
+value, except as showing how long Harold's memory was cherished.
+According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan,
+and they unanimously voted that the oath--more, in his version,
+than a mere oath of homage--was not binding.  It is not likely that
+such a vote was ever formally passed, but its terms would only
+express what every Englishman would feel.  The oath, whatever its
+terms, had given William a great advantage; but every Englishman
+would argue both that the oath, whatever its terms, could not
+hinder the English nation from offering Harold the crown, and that
+it could not bind Harold to refuse the crown if it should be so
+offered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM--JANUARY-OCTOBER 1066
+
+
+
+If the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold's
+oath to William, its fulfilment became a practical question in
+little more than a year.  How the year 1065 passed in Normandy we
+have no record; in England its later months saw the revolt of
+Northumberland against Harold's brother Tostig, and the
+reconciliation which Harold made between the revolters and the king
+to the damage of his brother's interests.  Then came Edward's
+sickness, of which he died on January 5, 1066.  He had on his
+deathbed recommended Harold to the assembled Witan as his successor
+in the kingdom.  The candidate was at once elected.  Whether
+William, Edgar, or any other, was spoken of we know not; but as to
+the recommendation of Edward and the consequent election of Harold
+the English writers are express.  The next day Edward was buried,
+and Harold was crowned in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop of
+York in Edward's new church at Westminster.  Northumberland refused
+to acknowledge him; but the malcontents were won over by the coming
+of the king and his friend Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester.  It
+was most likely now, as a seal of this reconciliation, that Harold
+married Ealdgyth, the sister of the two northern earls Edwin and
+Morkere, and the widow of the Welsh king Gruffydd.  He doubtless
+hoped in this way to win the loyalty of the earls and their
+followers.
+
+The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to English
+law.  In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writers
+of the time do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election,
+and coronation.  They slur them over, or, while admitting the mere
+facts, they represent each act as in some way invalid.  No writer
+near the time asserts a deathbed nomination of William; they speak
+only of a nomination at some earlier time.  But some Norman writers
+represent Harold as crowned by Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury.
+This was not, in the ideas of those times, a trifling question.  A
+coronation was then not a mere pageant; it was the actual admission
+to the kingly office.  Till his crowning and anointing, the
+claimant of the crown was like a bishop-elect before his
+consecration.  He had, by birth or election, the sole right to
+become king; it was the coronation that made him king.  And as the
+ceremony took the form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validity
+might seem to depend on the lawful position of the officiating
+bishop.  In England to perform that ceremony was the right and duty
+of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the canonical position of
+Stigand was doubtful.  He had been appointed on the flight of
+Robert; he had received the pallium, the badge of arch-episcopal
+rank, only from the usurping Benedict the Tenth.  It was therefore
+good policy in Harold to be crowned by Ealdred, to whose position
+there was no objection.  This is the only difference of fact
+between the English and Norman versions at this stage.  And the
+difference is easily explained.  At William's coronation the king
+walked to the altar between the two archbishops, but it was Ealdred
+who actually performed the ceremony.  Harold's coronation doubtless
+followed the same order.  But if Stigand took any part in that
+coronation, it was easy to give out that he took that special part
+on which the validity of the rite depended.
+
+Still, if Harold's accession was perfectly lawful, it was none the
+less strange and unusual.  Except the Danish kings chosen under
+more or less of compulsion, he was the first king who did not
+belong to the West-Saxon kingly house.  Such a choice could be
+justified only on the ground that that house contained no qualified
+candidate.  Its only known members were the children of the
+AEtheling Edward, young Edgar and his sisters.  Now Edgar would
+certainly have been passed by in favour of any better qualified
+member of the kingly house, as his father had been passed by in
+favour of King Edward.  And the same principle would, as things
+stood, justify passing him by in favour of a qualified candidate
+not of the kingly house.  But Edgar's right to the crown is never
+spoken of till a generation or two later, when the doctrines of
+hereditary right had gained much greater strength, and when Henry
+the Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar's sister
+Margaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings.  This
+distinction is important, because Harold is often called an
+usurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth.  But those who
+called him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out
+William the heir by bequest.  William's own election was out of the
+question.  He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold;
+he was a foreigner and an utter stranger.  Had Englishmen been
+minded to choose a foreigner, they doubtless would have chosen
+Swegen of Denmark.  He had found supporters when Edward was chosen;
+he was afterwards appealed to to deliver England from William.  He
+was no more of the English kingly house than Harold or William; but
+he was grandson of a man who had reigned over England,
+Northumberland might have preferred him to Harold; any part of
+England would have preferred him to William.  In fact any choice
+that could have been made must have had something strange about it.
+Edgar himself, the one surviving male of the old stock, besides his
+youth, was neither born in the land nor the son of a crowned king.
+Those two qualifications had always been deemed of great moment; an
+elaborate pedigree went for little; actual royal birth went for a
+great deal.  There was now no son of a king to choose.  Had there
+been even a child who was at once a son of Edward and a sister's
+son of Harold, he might have reigned with his uncle as his guardian
+and counsellor.  As it was, there was nothing to do but to choose
+the man who, though not of kingly blood, had ruled England well for
+thirteen years.
+
+The case thus put seemed plain to every Englishman, at all events
+to every man in Wessex, East-Anglia, and southern Mercia.  But it
+would not seem so plain in OTHER lands.  To the greater part of
+Western Europe William's claim might really seem the better.
+William himself doubtless thought his own claim the better; he
+deluded himself as he deluded others.  But we are more concerned
+with William as a statesman; and if it be statesmanship to adapt
+means to ends, whatever the ends may be, if it be statesmanship to
+make men believe that the worse cause is the better, then no man
+ever showed higher statesmanship than William showed in his great
+pleading before all Western Christendom.  It is a sign of the times
+that it was a pleading before all Western Christendom.  Others had
+claimed crowns; none had taken such pains to convince all mankind
+that the claim was a good one.  Such an appeal to public opinion
+marks on one side a great advance.  It was a great step towards the
+ideas of International Law and even of European concert.  It showed
+that the days of mere force were over, that the days of subtle
+diplomacy had begun.  Possibly the change was not without its dark
+side; it may be doubted whether a change from force to fraud is
+wholly a gain.  Still it was an appeal from the mere argument of
+the sword to something which at least professed to be right and
+reason.  William does not draw the sword till he has convinced
+himself and everybody else that he is drawing it in a just cause.
+In that age the appeal naturally took a religious shape.  Herein
+lay its immediate strength; herein lay its weakness as regarded the
+times to come.  William appealed to Emperor, kings, princes,
+Christian men great and small, in every Christian land.  He would
+persuade all; he would ask help of all.  But above all he appealed
+to the head of Christendom, the Bishop of Rome.  William in his own
+person could afford to do so; where he reigned, in Normandy or in
+England, there was no fear of Roman encroachments; he was fully
+minded to be in all causes and over all persons within his
+dominions supreme.  While he lived, no Pope ventured to dispute his
+right.  But by acknowledging the right of the Pope to dispose of
+crowns, or at least to judge as to the right to crowns, he prepared
+many days of humiliation for kings in general and specially for his
+own successors.  One man in Western Europe could see further than
+William, perhaps even further than Lanfranc.  The chief counsellor
+of Pope Alexander the Second was the Archdeacon Hildebrand, the
+future Gregory the Seventh.  If William outwitted the world,
+Hildebrand outwitted William.  William's appeal to the Pope to
+decide between two claimants for the English crown strengthened
+Gregory not a little in his daring claim to dispose of the crowns
+of Rome, of Italy, and of Germany.  Still this recognition of Roman
+claims led more directly to the humiliation of William's successor
+in his own kingdom.  Moreover William's successful attempt to
+represent his enterprise as a holy war, a crusade before crusades
+were heard of, did much to suggest and to make ready the way for
+the real crusades a generation later.  It was not till after
+William's death that Urban preached the crusade, but it was during
+William's life that Gregory planned it.
+
+The appeal was strangely successful.  William convinced, or seemed
+to convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his claim
+to the English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good work
+to help him to assert it in arms.  He persuaded his own subjects;
+he certainly did not constrain them.  He persuaded some foreign
+princes to give him actual help, some to join his muster in person;
+he persuaded all to help him so far as not to hinder their subjects
+from joining him as volunteers.  And all this was done by sheer
+persuasion, by argument good or bad.  In adapting of means to ends,
+in applying to each class of men that kind of argument which best
+suited it, the diplomacy, the statesmanship, of William was
+perfect.  Again we ask, How far was it the statesmanship of
+William, how far of Lanfranc?  But a prince need not do everything
+with his own hands and say everything with his own tongue.  It was
+no small part of the statesmanship of William to find out Lanfranc,
+to appreciate him and to trust him.  And when two subtle brains
+were at work, more could be done by the two working in partnership
+than by either working alone.
+
+By what arguments did the Duke of the Normans and the Prior of Bec
+convince mankind that the worse cause was the better?  We must
+always remember the transitional character of the age.  England was
+in political matters in advance of other Western lands; that is, it
+lagged behind other Western lands.  It had not gone so far on the
+downward course.  It kept far more than Gaul or even Germany of the
+old Teutonic institutions, the substance of which later ages have
+won back under new shapes.  Many things were understood in England
+which are now again understood everywhere, but which were no longer
+understood in France or in the lands held of the French crown.  The
+popular election of kings comes foremost.  Hugh Capet was an
+elective king as much as Harold; but the French kings had made
+their crown the most strictly hereditary of all crowns.  They
+avoided any interregnum by having their sons crowned in their
+lifetime.  So with the great fiefs of the crown.  The notion of
+kingship as an office conferred by the nation, of a duchy or county
+as an office held under the king, was still fully alive in England;
+in Gaul it was forgotten.  Kingdom, duchies, counties, had all
+become possessions instead of offices, possessions passing by
+hereditary succession of some kind.  But no rule of hereditary
+succession was universally or generally accepted.  To this day the
+kingdoms of Europe differ as to the question of female succession,
+and it is but slowly that the doctrine of representation has ousted
+the more obvious doctrine of nearness of kin.  All these points
+were then utterly unsettled; crowns, save of course that of the
+Empire, were to pass by hereditary right; only what was hereditary
+right?  At such a time claims would be pressed which would have
+seemed absurd either earlier or later.  To Englishmen, if it seemed
+strange to elect one who was not of the stock of Cerdic, it seemed
+much more strange to be called on to accept without election, or to
+elect as a matter of course, one who was not of the stock of Cerdic
+and who was a stranger into the bargain.  Out of England it would
+not seem strange when William set forth that Edward, having no
+direct heirs, had chosen his near kinsman William as his successor.
+Put by itself, that statement had a plausible sound.  The
+transmission of a crown by bequest belongs to the same range of
+ideas as its transmission by hereditary right; both assume the
+crown to be a property and not an office.  Edward's nomination of
+Harold, the election of Harold, the fact that William's kindred to
+Edward lay outside the royal line of England, the fact that there
+was, in the person of Edgar, a nearer kinsman within that royal
+line, could all be slurred over or explained away or even turned to
+William's profit.  Let it be that Edward on his death-bed had
+recommended Harold, and that the Witan had elected Harold.  The
+recommendation was wrung from a dying man in opposition to an
+earlier act done when he was able to act freely.  The election was
+brought about by force or fraud; if it was free, it was of no force
+against William's earlier claim of kindred and bequest.  As for
+Edgar, as few people in England thought of him, still fewer out of
+England would have ever heard of him.  It is more strange that the
+bastardy of William did not tell against him, as it had once told
+in his own duchy.  But this fact again marks the transitional age.
+Altogether the tale that a man who was no kinsman of the late king
+had taken to himself the crown which the king had bequeathed to a
+kinsman, might, even without further aggravation, be easily made to
+sound like a tale of wrong.
+
+But the case gained tenfold strength when William added that the
+doer of the wrong was of all men the one most specially bound not
+to do it.  The usurper was in any case William's man, bound to act
+in all things for his lord.  Perhaps he was more; perhaps he had
+directly sworn to receive William as king.  Perhaps he had promised
+all this with an oath of special solemnity.  It would be easy to
+enlarge on all these further counts as making up an amount of guilt
+which William not only had the right to chastise, but which he
+would be lacking in duty if he failed to chastise.  He had to
+punish the perjurer, to avenge the wrongs of the saints.  Surely
+all who should help him in so doing would be helping in a righteous
+work.
+
+The answer to all this was obvious.  Putting the case at the very
+worst, assuming that Harold had sworn all that he is ever said to
+have sworn, assuming that he swore it in the most solemn way in
+which he is ever said to have sworn it, William's claim was not
+thereby made one whit better.  Whatever Harold's own guilt might
+be, the people of England had no share in it.  Nothing that Harold
+had done could bar their right to choose their king freely.  Even
+if Harold declined the crown, that would not bind the electors to
+choose William.  But when the notion of choosing kings had begun to
+sound strange, all this would go for nothing.  There would be no
+need even to urge that in any case the wrong done by Harold to
+William gave William a casus belli against Harold, and that
+William, if victorious, might claim the crown of England, as a
+possession of Harold's, by right of conquest.  In fact William
+never claimed the crown by conquest, as conquest is commonly
+understood.  He always represented himself as the lawful heir,
+unhappily driven to use force to obtain his rights.  The other
+pleas were quite enough to satisfy most men out of England and
+Scandinavia.  William's work was to claim the crown of which he was
+unjustly deprived, and withal to deal out a righteous chastisement
+on the unrighteous and ungodly man by whom he had been deprived of
+it.
+
+In the hands of diplomatists like William and Lanfranc, all these
+arguments, none of which had in itself the slightest strength, were
+enough to turn the great mass of continental opinion in William's
+favour.  But he could add further arguments specially adapted to
+different classes of minds.  He could hold out the prospect of
+plunder, the prospect of lands and honours in a land whose wealth
+was already proverbial.  It might of course be answered that the
+enterprise against England was hazardous and its success unlikely.
+But in such matters, men listen rather to their hopes than to their
+fears.  To the Normans it would be easy, not only to make out a
+case against Harold, but to rake up old grudges against the English
+nation.  Under Harold the son of Cnut, Alfred, a prince half Norman
+by birth, wholly Norman by education, the brother of the late king,
+the lawful heir to the crown, had been betrayed and murdered by
+somebody.  A widespread belief laid the deed to the charge of the
+father of the new king.  This story might easily be made a ground
+of national complaint by Normandy against England, and it was easy
+to infer that Harold had some share in the alleged crime of
+Godwine.  It was easy to dwell on later events, on the driving of
+so many Normans out of England, with Archbishop Robert at their
+head.  Nay, not only had the lawful primate been driven out, but an
+usurper had been set in his place, and this usurping archbishop had
+been made to bestow a mockery of consecration on the usurping king.
+The proposed aggression on England was even represented as a
+missionary work, undertaken for the good of the souls of the
+benighted islanders.  For, though the English were undoubtedly
+devout after their own fashion, there was much in the
+ecclesiastical state of England which displeased strict churchmen
+beyond sea, much that William, when he had the power, deemed it his
+duty to reform.  The insular position of England naturally parted
+it in many things from the usages and feelings of the mainland, and
+it was not hard to get up a feeling against the nation as well as
+against its king.  All this could not really strengthen William's
+claim; but it made men look more favourably on his enterprise.
+
+
+The fact that the Witan were actually in session at Edward's death
+had made it possible to carry out Harold's election and coronation
+with extreme speed.  The electors had made their choice before
+William had any opportunity of formally laying his claim before
+them.  This was really an advantage to him; he could the better
+represent the election and coronation as invalid.  His first step
+was of course to send an embassy to Harold to call on him even now
+to fulfil his oath.  The accounts of this embassy, of which we have
+no English account, differ as much as the different accounts of the
+oath.  Each version of course makes William demand and Harold
+refuse whatever it had made Harold swear.  These demands and
+refusals range from the resignation of the kingdom to a marriage
+with William's daughter.  And it is hard to separate this embassy
+from later messages between the rivals.  In all William demands,
+Harold refuses; the arguments on each side are likely to be
+genuine.  Harold is called on to give up the crown to William, to
+hold it of William, to hold part of the kingdom of William, to
+submit the question to the judgement of the Pope, lastly, if he
+will do nothing else, at least to marry William's daughter.
+Different writers place these demands at different times,
+immediately after Harold's election or immediately before the
+battle.  The last challenge to a single combat between Harold and
+William of course appears only on the eve of the battle.  Now none
+of these accounts come from contemporary partisans of Harold; every
+one is touched by hostile feeling towards him.  Thus the
+constitutional language that is put into his mouth, almost
+startling from its modern sound, has greater value.  A King of the
+English can do nothing without the consent of his Witan.  They gave
+him the kingdom; without their consent, he cannot resign it or
+dismember it or agree to hold it of any man; without their consent,
+he cannot even marry a foreign wife.  Or he answers that the
+daughter of William whom he promised to marry is dead, and that the
+sister whom he promised to give to a Norman is dead also.  Harold
+does not deny the fact of his oath--whatever its nature; he
+justifies its breach because it was taken against is will, and
+because it was in itself of no strength, as binding him to do
+impossible things.  He does not deny Edward's earlier promise to
+William; but, as a testament is of no force while the testator
+liveth, he argues that it is cancelled by Edward's later nomination
+of himself.  In truth there is hardly any difference between the
+disputants as to matters of fact.  One side admits at least a
+plighting of homage on the part of Harold; the other side admits
+Harold's nomination and election.  The real difference is as to the
+legal effect of either.  Herein comes William's policy.  The
+question was one of English law and of nothing else, a matter for
+the Witan of England and for no other judges.  William, by
+ingeniously mixing all kinds of irrelevant issues, contrived to
+remove the dispute from the region of municipal into that of
+international law, a law whose chief representative was the Bishop
+of Rome.  By winning the Pope to his side, William could give his
+aggression the air of a religious war; but in so doing, he
+unwittingly undermined the throne that he was seeking and the
+thrones of all other princes.
+
+The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his time
+thought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment in
+our constitutional history.  The King is the doer of everything;
+but he can do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan.
+They can say Yea or Nay to every proposal of the King.  An
+energetic and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whatever
+he chose to ask.  A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was
+in great danger of losing his kingdom.  The statesmanship of
+William knew how to turn this constitutional system, without making
+any change in the letter, into a despotism like that of
+Constantinople or Cordova.  But the letter lived, to come to light
+again on occasion.  The Revolution of 1399 was a falling back on
+the doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a falling
+back on the doctrines of 1399.  The principle at all three periods
+is that the power of the King is strictly limited by law, but that,
+within the limits which the law sets to his power, he acts
+according to his own discretion.  King and Witan stand out as
+distinct powers, each of which needs the assent of the other to its
+acts, and which may always refuse that assent.  The political work
+of the last two hundred years has been to hinder these direct
+collisions between King and Parliament by the ingenious
+conventional device of a body of men who shall be in name the
+ministers of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House of
+Parliament.  We do not understand our own political history, still
+less can we understand the position and the statesmanship of the
+Conqueror, unless we fully take in what the English constitution in
+the eleventh century really was, how very modern-sounding are some
+of its doctrines, some of its forms.  Statesmen of our own day
+might do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047.
+There is the earliest recorded instance of a debate on a question
+of foreign policy.  Earl Godwine proposes to give help to Denmark,
+then at war with Norway.  He is outvoted on the motion of Earl
+Leofric, the man of moderate politics, who appears as leader of the
+party of non-intervention.  It may be that in some things we have
+not always advanced in the space of eight hundred years.
+
+
+The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign
+powers, and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order.  Several
+negotiations were doubtless going on at the same time.  The embassy
+to Harold would of course come first of all.  Till his demand had
+been made and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere.  We
+know not whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold's
+journey to Northumberland, before or after his marriage with
+Ealdgyth.  If Harold was already married, the demand that he should
+marry William's daughter could have been meant only in mockery.
+Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that it was
+sent without any expectation that its demands would be listened to.
+It was sent to put Harold, from William's point of view, more
+thoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William's case against
+him.  It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the only
+statement, from a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassy
+come on the tenth day after Edward's death.  Next after the embassy
+would come William's appeal to his own subjects, though Lanfranc
+might well be pleading at Rome while William was pleading at
+Lillebonne.  The Duke first consulted a select company, who
+promised their own services, but declined to pledge any one else.
+It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the Duke in an
+attempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea.  But voluntary
+help was soon ready.  A meeting of the whole baronage of Normandy
+was held at Lillebonne.  The assembly declined any obligation which
+could be turned into a precedent, and passed no general vote at
+all.  But the barons were won over one by one, and each promised
+help in men and ships according to his means.
+
+William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of his
+own subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealous
+support.  And as the flame spread from one part of Europe to
+another, the zeal of Normandy would wax keener and keener.  The
+dealings of William with foreign powers are told us in a confused,
+piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory way.  We hear that embassies
+went to the young King Henry of Germany, son of the great Emperor,
+the friend of England, and also to Swegen of Denmark.  The Norman
+story runs that both princes promised William their active support.
+Yet Swegen, the near kinsman of Harold, was a friend of England,
+and the same writer who puts this promise into his mouth makes him
+send troops to help his English cousin.  Young Henry or his
+advisers could have no motive for helping William; but subjects of
+the Empire were at least not hindered from joining his banner.  To
+the French king William perhaps offered the bait of holding the
+crown of England of him; but Philip is said to have discouraged
+William's enterprise as much as he could.  Still he did not hinder
+French subjects from taking a part in it.  Of the princes who held
+of the French crown, Eustace of Boulogne, who joined the muster in
+person, and Guy of Ponthieu, William's own vassal, who sent his
+son, seem to have been the only ones who did more than allow the
+levying of volunteers in their dominions.  A strange tale is told
+that Conan of Britanny took this moment for bringing up his own
+forgotten pretensions to the Norman duchy.  If William was going to
+win England, let him give up Normandy to him.  He presently, the
+tale goes, died of a strange form of poisoning, in which it is
+implied that William had a hand.  This is the story of Walter and
+Biota over again.  It is perhaps enough to say that the Breton
+writers know nothing of the tale.
+
+But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court.  We
+might have thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so well
+skilled in Roman ways; but William perhaps needed him as a constant
+adviser by his own person.  Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, was
+sent to Pope Alexander.  No application could better suit papal
+interests than the one that was now made; but there were some moral
+difficulties.  Not a few of the cardinals, Hildebrand tells us
+himself, argued, not without strong language towards Hildebrand,
+that the Church had nothing to do with such matters, and that it
+was sinful to encourage a claim which could not be enforced without
+bloodshed.  But with many, with Hildebrand among them, the notion
+of the Church as a party or a power came before all thoughts of its
+higher duties.  One side was carefully heard; the other seems not
+to have been heard at all.  We hear of no summons to Harold, and
+the King of the English could not have pleaded at the Pope's bar
+without acknowledging that his case was at least doubtful.  The
+judgement of Alexander or of Hildebrand was given for William.
+Harold was declared to be an usurper, perhaps declared
+excommunicated.  The right to the English crown was declared to be
+in the Duke of the Normans, and William was solemnly blessed in the
+enterprise in which he was at once to win his own rights, to
+chastise the wrong-doer, to reform the spiritual state of the
+misguided islanders, to teach them fuller obedience to the Roman
+See and more regular payment of its temporal dues.  William gained
+his immediate point; but his successors on the English throne paid
+the penalty.  Hildebrand gained his point for ever, or for as long
+a time as men might be willing to accept the Bishop of Rome as a
+judge in any matters.  The precedent by which Hildebrand, under
+another name, took on him to dispose of a higher crown than that of
+England was now fully established.
+
+As an outward sign of papal favour, William received a consecrated
+banner and a ring containing a hair of Saint Peter.  Here was
+something for men to fight for.  The war was now a holy one.  All
+who were ready to promote their souls' health by slaughter and
+plunder might flock to William's standard, to the standard of Saint
+Peter.  Men came from most French-speaking lands, the Normans of
+Apulia and Sicily being of course not slow to take up the quarrel
+of their kinsfolk.  But, next to his own Normandy, the lands which
+sent most help were Flanders, the land of Matilda, and Britanny,
+where the name of the Saxon might still be hateful.  We must never
+forget that the host of William, the men who won England, the men
+who settled in England, were not an exclusively Norman body.  Not
+Norman, but FRENCH, is the name most commonly opposed to ENGLISH,
+as the name of the conquering people.  Each Norman severally would
+have scorned that name for himself personally; but it was the only
+name that could mark the whole of which he and his countrymen
+formed a part.  Yet, if the Normans were but a part, they were the
+greatest and the noblest part; their presence alone redeemed the
+enterprise from being a simple enterprise of brigandage.  The
+Norman Conquest was after all a Norman Conquest; men of other lands
+were merely helpers.  So far as it was not Norman, it was Italian;
+the subtle wit of Lombard Lanfranc and Tuscan Hildebrand did as
+much to overthrow us as the lance and bow of Normandy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--WILLIAM'S INVASION OF ENGLAND--AUGUST-DECEMBER 1066
+
+
+
+The statesmanship of William had triumphed.  The people of England
+had chosen their king, and a large part of the world had been won
+over by the arts of a foreign prince to believe that it was a
+righteous and holy work to set him on the throne to which the
+English people had chosen the foremost man among themselves.  No
+diplomatic success was ever more thorough.  Unluckily we know
+nothing of the state of feeling in England while William was
+plotting and pleading beyond the sea.  Nor do we know how much men
+in England knew of what was going on in other lands, or what they
+thought when they heard of it.  We know only that, after Harold had
+won over Northumberland, he came back and held the Easter Gemot at
+Westminster.  Then in the words of the Chronicler, "it was known to
+him that William Bastard, King Edward's kinsman, would come hither
+and win this land."  This is all that our own writers tell us about
+William Bastard, between his peaceful visit to England in 1052 and
+his warlike visit in 1066.  But we know that King Harold did all
+that man could do to defeat his purposes, and that he was therein
+loyally supported by the great mass of the English nation, we may
+safely say by all, save his two brothers-in-law and so many as they
+could influence.
+
+William's doings we know more fully.  The military events of this
+wonderful year there is no need to tell in detail.  But we see that
+William's generalship was equal to his statesmanship, and that it
+was met by equal generalship on the side of Harold.  Moreover, the
+luck of William is as clear as either his statesmanship or his
+generalship.  When Harold was crowned on the day of the Epiphany,
+he must have felt sure that he would have to withstand an invasion
+of England before the year was out.  But it could not have come
+into the mind of Harold, William, or Lanfranc, or any other man,
+that he would have to withstand two invasions of England at the
+same moment.
+
+It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as the
+invasion of William, which decided the fate of England.  The issue
+of the struggle might have gone against England, had she had to
+strive against one enemy only; as it was, it was the attack made by
+two enemies at once which divided her strength, and enabled the
+Normans to land without resistance.  The two invasions came as
+nearly as possible at the same moment.  Harold Hardrada can hardly
+have reached the Yorkshire coast before September; the battle of
+Fulford was fought on September 20th and that of Stamfordbridge on
+September 25th.  William landed on September 28th, and the battle
+of Senlac was fought on October 14th.  Moreover William's fleet was
+ready by August 12th; his delay in crossing was owing to his
+waiting for a favourable wind.  When William landed, the event of
+the struggle in the North could not have been known in Sussex.  He
+might have had to strive, not with Harold of England, but with
+Harold of Norway as his conqueror.
+
+At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his invasion
+of England is quite uncertain.  We can say nothing of his doings
+till he is actually afloat.  And with the three mighty forms of
+William and the two Harolds on the scene, there is something at
+once grotesque and perplexing in the way in which an English
+traitor flits about among them.  The banished Tostig, deprived of
+his earldom in the autumn of 1065, had then taken refuge in
+Flanders.  He now plays a busy part, the details of which are lost
+in contradictory accounts.  But it is certain that in May 1066 he
+made an ineffectual attack on England.  And this attack was most
+likely made with the connivance of William.  It suited William to
+use Tostig as an instrument, and to encourage so restless a spirit
+in annoying the common enemy.  It is also certain that Tostig was
+with the Norwegian fleet in September, and that he died at
+Stamfordbridge.  We know also that he was in Scotland between May
+and September.  It is therefore hard to believe that Tostig had so
+great a hand in stirring up Harold Hardrada to his expedition as
+the Norwegian story makes out.  Most likely Tostig simply joined
+the expedition which Harold Hardrada independently planned.  One
+thing is certain, that, when Harold of England was attacked by two
+enemies at once, it was not by two enemies acting in concert.  The
+interests of William and of Harold of Norway were as much opposed
+to one another as either of them was to the interests of Harold of
+England.
+
+One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike.  Either in
+Normandy or in England it was easy to get together an army ready to
+fight a battle; it was not easy to keep a large body of men under
+arms for any long time without fighting.  It was still harder to
+keep them at once without fighting and without plundering.  What
+William had done in this way in two invasions of Normandy, he was
+now called on to do on a greater scale.  His great and motley army
+was kept during a great part of August and September, first at the
+Dive, then at Saint Valery, waiting for the wind that was to take
+it to England.  And it was kept without doing any serious damage to
+the lands where they were encamped.  In a holy war, this time was
+of course largely spent in appeals to the religious feelings of the
+army.  Then came the wonderful luck of William, which enabled him
+to cross at the particular moment when he did cross.  A little
+earlier or later, he would have found his landing stoutly disputed;
+as it was, he landed without resistance.  Harold of England, not
+being able, in his own words, to be everywhere at once, had done
+what he could.  He and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine undertook
+the defence of southern England against the Norman; the earls of
+the North, his brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere, were to defend
+their own land against the Norwegians.  His own preparations were
+looked on with wonder.  To guard the long line of coast against the
+invader, he got together such a force both by sea and land as no
+king had ever got together before, and he kept it together for a
+longer time than William did, through four months of inaction, save
+perhaps some small encounters by sea.  At last, early in September,
+provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to go back for the
+harvest, and the great host had to be disbanded.  Could William
+have sailed as soon as his fleet was ready, he would have found
+southern England thoroughly prepared to meet him.  Meanwhile the
+northern earls had clearly not kept so good watch as the king.
+Harold Hardrada harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse,
+and landed without resistance.  At last the earls met him in arms
+and were defeated by the Northmen at Fulford near York.  Four days
+later York capitulated, and agreed to receive Harold Hardrada as
+king.  Meanwhile the news reached Harold of England; he got
+together his housecarls and such other troops as could be mustered
+at the moment, and by a march of almost incredible speed he was
+able to save the city and all northern England.  The fight of
+Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous warrior of
+the North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of England.
+But his northward march had left southern England utterly
+unprotected.  Had the south wind delayed a little longer, he might,
+before the second enemy came, have been again on the South-Saxon
+coast.  As it was, three days after Stamfordbridge, while Harold of
+England was still at York, William of Normandy landed without
+opposition at Pevensey.
+
+Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for
+William.  The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for
+his purposes, and the result had been what he must have wished.
+With one Harold he must fight, and to fight with Harold of England
+was clearly best for his ends.  His work would not have been done,
+if another had stepped in to chastise the perjurer.  Now that he
+was in England, it became a trial of generalship between him and
+Harold.  William's policy was to provoke Harold to fight at once.
+It was perhaps Harold's policy--so at least thought Gyrth--to
+follow yet more thoroughly William's own example in the French
+invasions.  Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid all
+action, and even lay waste the land between London and the south
+coast, and the strength of the invaders would gradually be worn
+out.  But it might have been hard to enforce such a policy on men
+whose hearts were stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom,
+the King's own thegns and housecarls, were eager to follow up their
+victory over the Northern with a yet mightier victory over the
+Norman.  And Harold spoke as an English king should speak, when he
+answered that he would never lay waste a single rood of English
+ground, that he would never harm the lands or the goods of the men
+who had chosen him to be their king.  In the trial of skill between
+the two commanders, each to some extent carried his point.
+William's havoc of a large part of Sussex compelled Harold to march
+at once to give battle.  But Harold was able to give battle at a
+place of his own choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind of
+warfare which he had to wage.
+
+Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being too
+eager to fight and not waiting for more troops.  But to any one who
+studies the ground it is plain that Harold needed, not more troops,
+but to some extent better troops, and that he would not have got
+those better troops by waiting.  From York Harold had marched to
+London, as the meeting-place for southern and eastern England, as
+well as for the few who actually followed him from the North and
+those who joined him on the march.  Edwin and Morkere were bidden
+to follow with the full force of their earldoms.  This they took
+care not to do.  Harold and his West-Saxons had saved them, but
+they would not strike a blow back again.  Both now and earlier in
+the year they doubtless aimed at a division of the kingdom, such as
+had been twice made within fifty years.  Either Harold or William
+might reign in Wessex and East-Anglia; Edwin should reign in
+Northumberland and Mercia.  William, the enemy of Harold but no
+enemy of theirs, might be satisfied with the part of England which
+was under the immediate rule of Harold and his brothers, and might
+allow the house of Leofric to keep at least an under-kingship in
+the North.  That the brother earls held back from the King's muster
+is undoubted, and this explanation fits in with their whole conduct
+both before and after.  Harold had thus at his command the picked
+men of part of England only, and he had to supply the place of
+those who were lacking with such forces as he could get.  The lack
+of discipline on the part of these inferior troops lost Harold the
+battle.  But matters would hardly have been mended by waiting for
+men who had made up their minds not to come.
+
+The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately before the
+battle, as well as at an earlier time, have been spoken of already.
+The challenge to single combat at least comes now.  When Harold
+refused every demand, William called on Harold to spare the blood
+of his followers, and decide his claims by battle in his own
+person.  Such a challenge was in the spirit of Norman
+jurisprudence, which in doubtful cases looked for the judgement of
+God, not, as the English did, by the ordeal, but by the personal
+combat of the two parties.  Yet this challenge too was surely given
+in the hope that Harold would refuse it, and would thereby put
+himself, in Norman eyes, yet more thoroughly in the wrong.  For the
+challenge was one which Harold could not but refuse.  William
+looked on himself as one who claimed his own from one who
+wrongfully kept him out of it.  He was plaintiff in a suit in which
+Harold was defendant; that plaintiff and defendant were both
+accompanied by armies was an accident for which the defendant, who
+had refused all peaceful means of settlement, was to blame.  But
+Harold and his people could not look on the matter as a mere
+question between two men.  The crown was Harold's by the gift of
+the nation, and he could not sever his own cause from the cause of
+the nation.  The crown was his; but it was not his to stake on the
+issue of a single combat.  If Harold were killed, the nation might
+give the crown to whom they thought good; Harold's death could not
+make William's claim one jot better.  The cause was not personal,
+but national.  The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged,
+not the King only, but every man in England, and every man might
+claim to help in driving him out.  Again, in an ordinary wager of
+battle, the judgement can be enforced; here, whether William slew
+Harold or Harold slew William, there was no means of enforcing the
+judgement except by the strength of the two armies.  If Harold
+fell, the English army were not likely to receive William as king;
+if William fell, the Norman army was still less likely to go
+quietly out of England.  The challenge was meant as a mere blind;
+it would raise the spirit of William's followers; it would be
+something for his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour;
+that was all.
+
+
+The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus' day, was
+more than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and two
+armies.  It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman, a
+trial between two modes of warfare.  The English clave to the old
+Teutonic tactics.  They fought on foot in the close array of the
+shield-wall.  Those who rode to the field dismounted when the fight
+began.  They first hurled their javelins, and then took to the
+weapons of close combat.  Among these the Danish axe, brought in by
+Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English broadsword.  Such was
+the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had followed
+Harold from York or joined him on his march.  But the treason of
+Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of the
+picked men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almost
+anyhow.  Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest.
+The strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the English
+were lacking, in horsemen and archers.  These last seem to have
+been a force of William's training; we first hear of the Norman
+bowmen at Varaville.  These two ways of fighting were brought each
+one to perfection by the leaders on each side.  They had not yet
+been tried against one another.  At Stamfordbridge Harold had
+defeated an enemy whose tactics were the same as his own.  William
+had not fought a pitched battle since Val-es-dunes in his youth.
+Indeed pitched battles, such as English and Scandinavian warriors
+were used to in the wars of Edmund and Cnut, were rare in
+continental warfare.  That warfare mainly consisted in the attack
+and defence of strong places, and in skirmishes fought under their
+walls.  But William knew how to make use of troops of different
+kinds and to adapt them to any emergency.  Harold too was a man of
+resources; he had gained his Welsh successes by adapting his men to
+the enemy's way of fighting.  To withstand the charge of the Norman
+horsemen, Harold clave to the national tactics, but he chose for
+the place of battle a spot where those tactics would have the
+advantage.  A battle on the low ground would have been favourable
+to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and fenced in a hill, the
+hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey and town of
+Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack.  The Norman horsemen
+had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the
+English javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the
+barricade.  And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the
+inferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase
+the Bretons whom they had driven back.  This suggested to William
+the device of the feigned flight; the English line of defence was
+broken, and the advantage of ground was lost.  Thus was the great
+battle lost.  And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and
+his brothers, which left England without leaders, and by the
+unyielding valour of Harold's immediate following.  They were slain
+to a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless.
+
+
+William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far
+from having full possession of his conquest.  He had military
+possession of part of one shire only; he had to look for further
+resistance, and he met with not a little.  But his combined luck
+and policy served him well.  He could put on the form of full
+possession before he had the reality; he could treat all further
+resistance as rebellion against an established authority; he could
+make resistance desultory and isolated.  William had to subdue
+England in detail; he had never again to fight what the English
+Chroniclers call a folk-fight.  His policy after his victory was
+obvious.  Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king,
+but he alone had the right to become king.  He had thus far been
+driven to maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to use
+force any further, if peaceful possession was to be had.  His
+course was therefore to show himself stern to all who withstood
+him, but to take all who submitted into his protection and favour.
+He seems however to have looked for a speedier submission than
+really happened.  He waited a while in his camp for men to come in
+and acknowledge him.  As none came, he set forth to win by the
+strong arm the land which he claimed of right.
+
+Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully
+believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in
+it all the more after the issue of the battle.  God, Harold had
+said, should judge between himself and William, and God had judged
+in William's favour.  With all his clear-sightedness, he would
+hardly understand how differently things looked in English eyes.
+Some indeed, specially churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now
+began to doubt whether to fight against William was not to fight
+against God.  But to the nation at large William was simply as
+Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times.  England had before now been
+conquered, but never in a single fight.  Alfred and Edmund had
+fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men had no mind to
+submit to the Norman because he had been once victorious.  But
+Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fight
+again; their people had not to choose a new king; the King had
+merely to gather a new army.  But Harold was slain, and the first
+question was how to fill his place.  The Witan, so many as could be
+got together, met to choose a king, whose first duty would be to
+meet William the Conqueror in arms.  The choice was not easy.
+Harold's sons were young, and not born AEthelings.  His brothers,
+of whom Gyrth at least must have been fit to reign, had fallen with
+him.  Edwin and Morkere were not at the battle, but they were at
+the election.  But schemes for winning the crown for the house of
+Leofric would find no favour in an assembly held in London.  For
+lack of any better candidate, the hereditary sentiment prevailed.
+Young Edgar was chosen.  But the bishops, it is said, did not
+agree; they must have held that God had declared in favour of
+William.  Edwin and Morkere did agree; but they withdrew to their
+earldoms, still perhaps cherishing hopes of a divided kingdom.
+Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act of kingship by
+confirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough; but of any
+general preparation for warfare there is not a sign.  The local
+resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined
+action, the case was not hopeless.  But with Edgar for king, with
+the northern earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops at
+least lukewarm, nothing could be done.  The Londoners were eager to
+fight; so doubtless were others; but there was no leader.  So far
+from there being another Harold or Edmund to risk another battle,
+there was not even a leader to carry out the policy of Fabius and
+Gyrth.
+
+Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and after
+his own fashion.  We must remember the effect of the mere slaughter
+of the great battle.  William's own army had suffered severely:  he
+did not leave Hastings till he had received reinforcements from
+Normandy.  But to England the battle meant the loss of the whole
+force of the south-eastern shires.  A large part of England was
+left helpless.  William followed much the same course as he had
+followed in Maine.  A legal claimant of the crown, it was his
+interest as soon as possible to become a crowned king, and that in
+his kinsman's church at Westminster.  But it was not his interest
+to march straight on London and demand the crown, sword in hand.
+He saw that, without the support of the northern earls, Edgar could
+not possibly stand, and that submission to himself was only a
+question of time.  He therefore chose a roundabout course through
+those south-eastern shires which were wholly without means of
+resisting him.  He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying the land
+as he went, to frighten the people into submission.  The men of
+Romney had before the battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who
+had fallen into their hands, most likely by sea.  William took some
+undescribed vengeance for their slaughter.  Dover and its castle,
+the castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrender
+to William, yielded without a blow.  Here then he was gracious.
+When some of his unruly followers set fire to the houses of the
+town, William made good the losses of their owners.  Canterbury
+submitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers who
+received the submission of Winchester.  He marched on, ravaging as
+he went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever
+on the right bank of the Thames.  But a gallant sally of the
+citizens was repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark
+was burned.  William marched along the river to Wallingford.  Here
+he crossed, receiving for the first time the active support of an
+Englishman of high rank, Wiggod of Wallingford, sheriff of
+Oxfordshire.  He became one of a small class of Englishmen who were
+received to William's fullest favour, and kept at least as high a
+position under him as they had held before.  William still kept on,
+marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had before
+done to the south.  The city was to be isolated within a cordon of
+wasted lands.  His policy succeeded.  As no succours came from the
+North, the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at the
+approach of his rival.  At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, with
+several bishops and chief men, came to make their submission.  They
+offered the crown to William, and, after some debate, he accepted
+it.  But before he came in person, he took means to secure the
+city.  The beginnings of the fortress were now laid which, in the
+course of William's reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London.
+
+It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within
+his grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter
+of debate.  He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered
+to him; and yet he doubts about taking it.  Ought he, he asks, to
+take the crown of a kingdom of which he has not as yet full
+possession?  At that time the territory of which William had even
+military possession could not have stretched much to the north-west
+of a line drawn from Winchester to Norwich.  Outside that line men
+were, as William is made to say, still in rebellion.  His scruples
+were come over by an orator who was neither Norman nor English, but
+one of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars.  The
+debate was most likely got up at William's bidding, but it was not
+got up without a motive.  William, ever seeking outward legality,
+seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably,
+seeking for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wished
+to make his acceptance of the English crown as formally regular as
+might be.  Strong as he held his claim to be by the gift of Edward,
+it would be better to be, if not strictly chosen, at least
+peacefully accepted, by the chief men of England.  It might some
+day serve his purpose to say that the crown had been offered to
+him, and that he had accepted it only after a debate in which the
+chief speaker was an impartial stranger.  Having gained this point
+more, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in outward form,
+King-elect of the English.
+
+The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full king
+took place in Eadward's church of Westminster on Christmas day,
+1066, somewhat more than two months after the great battle,
+somewhat less than twelve months after the death of Edward and the
+coronation of Harold.  Nothing that was needed for a lawful
+crowning was lacking.  The consent of the people, the oath of the
+king, the anointing by the hands of a lawful metropolitan, all were
+there.  Ealdred acted as the actual celebrant, while Stigand took
+the second place in the ceremony.  But this outward harmony between
+the nation and its new king was marred by an unhappy accident.
+Norman horsemen stationed outside the church mistook the shout with
+which the people accepted the new king for the shout of men who
+were doing him damage.  But instead of going to his help, they
+began, in true Norman fashion, to set fire to the neighbouring
+houses.  The havoc and plunder that followed disturbed the
+solemnities of the day and were a bad omen for the new reign.  It
+was no personal fault of William's; in putting himself in the hands
+of subjects of such new and doubtful loyalty, he needed men near at
+hand whom he could trust.  But then it was his doing that England
+had to receive a king who needed foreign soldiers to guard him.
+
+
+William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outward
+ceremonies could make him so.  But he knew well how far he was from
+having won real kingly authority over the whole kingdom.  Hardly a
+third part of the land was in his obedience.  He had still, as he
+doubtless knew, to win his realm with the edge of the sword.  But
+he could now go forth to further conquests, not as a foreign
+invader, but as the king of the land, putting down rebellion among
+his own subjects.  If the men of Northumberland should refuse to
+receive him, he could tell them that he was their lawful king,
+anointed by their own archbishop.  It was sound policy to act as
+king of the whole land, to exercise a semblance of authority where
+he had none in fact.  And in truth he was king of the whole land,
+so far as there was no other king.  The unconquered parts of the
+land were in no mood to submit; but they could not agree on any
+common plan of resistance under any common leader.  Some were still
+for Edgar, some for Harold's sons, some for Swegen of Denmark.
+Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for themselves.  If one common
+leader could have been found even now, the throne of the foreign
+king would have been in no small danger.  But no such leader came:
+men stood still, or resisted piecemeal, so the land was conquered
+piecemeal, and that under cover of being brought under the
+obedience of its lawful king.
+
+
+Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his career as
+an English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful career it is.
+Its main principle was to respect formal legality wherever he
+could.  All William's purposes were to be carried out, as far as
+possible, under cover of strict adherence to the law of the land of
+which he had become the lawful ruler.  He had sworn at his crowning
+to keep the laws of the land, and to rule his kingdom as well as
+any king that had gone before him.  And assuredly he meant to keep
+his oath.  But a foreign king, at the head of a foreign army, and
+who had his foreign followers to reward, could keep that oath only
+in its letter and not in its spirit.  But it is wonderful how
+nearly he came to keep it in the letter.  He contrived to do his
+most oppressive acts, to deprive Englishmen of their lands and
+offices, and to part them out among strangers, under cover of
+English law.  He could do this.  A smaller man would either have
+failed to carry out his purposes at all, or he could have carried
+them out only by reckless violence.  When we examine the
+administration of William more in detail, we shall see that its
+effects in the long run were rather to preserve than to destroy our
+ancient institutions.  He knew the strength of legal fictions; by
+legal fictions he conquered and he ruled.  But every legal fiction
+is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward protest
+against unlawful violence.  That England underwent a Norman
+Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly England.  But
+that this could be was because that conquest was wrought by the
+Bastard of Falaise and by none other.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND--DECEMBER 1066-MARCH 1070
+
+
+
+The coronation of William had its effect in a moment.  It made him
+really king over part of England; it put him into a new position
+with regard to the rest.  As soon as there was a king, men flocked
+to swear oaths to him and become his men.  They came from shires
+where he had no real authority.  It was most likely now, rather
+than at Berkhampstead, that Edwin and Morkere at last made up their
+minds to acknowledge some king.  They became William's men and
+received again their lands and earldoms as his grant.  Other chief
+men from the North also submitted and received their lands and
+honours again.  But Edwin and Morkere were not allowed to go back
+to their earldoms.  William thought it safer to keep them near
+himself, under the guise of honour--Edwin was even promised one of
+his daughters in marriage--but really half as prisoners, half as
+hostages.  Of the two other earls, Waltheof son of Siward, who held
+the shires of Northampton and Huntingdon, and Oswulf who held the
+earldom of Bernicia or modern Northumberland, we hear nothing at
+this moment.  As for Waltheof, it is strange if he were not at
+Senlac; it is strange if he were there and came away alive.  But we
+only know that he was in William's allegiance a few months later.
+Oswulf must have held out in some marked way.  It was William's
+policy to act as king even where he had no means of carrying out
+his kingly orders.  He therefore in February 1067 granted the
+Bernician earldom to an Englishman named Copsige, who had acted as
+Tostig's lieutenant.  This implies the formal deprivation of
+Oswulf.  But William sent no force with the new earl, who had to
+take possession as he could.  That is to say, of two parties in a
+local quarrel, one hoped to strengthen itself by making use of
+William's name.  And William thought that it would strengthen his
+position to let at least his name be heard in every corner of the
+kingdom.  The rest of the story stands rather aloof from the main
+history.  Copsige got possession of the earldom for a moment.  He
+was then killed by Oswulf and his partisans, and Oswulf himself was
+killed in the course of the year by a common robber.  At Christmas,
+1067, William again granted or sold the earldom to another of the
+local chiefs, Gospatric.  But he made no attempt to exercise direct
+authority in those parts till the beginning of the year 1069.
+
+All this illustrates William's general course.  Crowned king over
+the land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of the
+kingdom which he actually held.  Of the passive disobedience of
+other parts he would take no present notice.  In northern and
+central England William could exercise no authority; but those
+lands were not in arms against him, nor did they acknowledge any
+other king.  Their earls, now his earls, were his favoured
+courtiers.  He could afford to be satisfied with this nominal
+kingship, till a fit opportunity came to make it real.  He could
+afford to lend his name to the local enterprise of Copsige.  It
+would at least be another count against the men of Bernicia that
+they had killed the earl whom King William gave them.
+
+Meanwhile William was taking very practical possession in the
+shires where late events had given him real authority.  His policy
+was to assert his rights in the strongest form, but to show his
+mildness and good will by refraining from carrying them out to the
+uttermost.  By right of conquest William claimed nothing.  He had
+come to take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some
+opposition in taking it.  The crown lands of King Edward passed of
+course to his successor.  As for the lands of other men, in
+William's theory all was forfeited to the crown.  The lawful heir
+had been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had
+helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him.  All then were
+directly or indirectly traitors.  The King might lawfully deal with
+the lands of all as his own.  But in the greater part of the
+kingdom it was impossible, in no part was it prudent, to carry out
+this doctrine in its fulness.  A passage in Domesday, compared with
+a passage in the English Chronicles, shows that, soon after
+William's coronation, the English as a body, within the lands
+already conquered, redeemed their lands.  They bought them back at
+a price, and held them as a fresh grant from King William.  Some
+special offenders, living and dead, were exempted from this favour.
+The King took to himself the estates of the house of Godwine, save
+those of Edith, the widow of his revered predecessor, whom it was
+his policy to treat with all honour.  The lands too of those who
+had died on Senlac were granted back to their heirs only of special
+favour, sometimes under the name of alms.  Thus, from the beginning
+of his reign, William began to make himself richer than any king
+that had been before him in England or than any other Western king
+of his day.  He could both punish his enemies and reward his
+friends.  Much of what he took he kept; much he granted away,
+mainly to his foreign followers, but sometimes also to Englishmen
+who had in any way won his favour.  Wiggod of Wallingford was one
+of the very few Englishmen who kept and received estates which put
+them alongside of the great Norman landowners.  The doctrine that
+all land was held of the King was now put into a practical shape.
+All, Englishmen and strangers, not only became William's subjects,
+but his men and his grantees.  Thus he went on during his whole
+reign.  There was no sudden change from the old state of things to
+the new.  After the general redemption of lands, gradually carried
+out as William's power advanced, no general blow was dealt at
+Englishmen as such.  They were not, like some conquered nations,
+formally degraded or put under any legal incapacities in their own
+land.  William simply distinguished between his loyal and his
+disloyal subjects, and used his opportunities for punishing the
+disloyal and rewarding the loyal.  Such punishments and rewards
+naturally took the shape of confiscations and grants of land.  If
+punishment was commonly the lot of the Englishman, and reward was
+the lot of the stranger, that was only because King William treated
+all men as they deserved.  Most Englishmen were disloyal; most
+strangers were loyal.  But disloyal strangers and loyal Englishmen
+fared according to their deserts.  The final result of this
+process, begun now and steadily carried on, was that, by the end of
+William's reign, the foreign king was surrounded by a body of
+foreign landowners and office-bearers of foreign birth.  When, in
+the early days of his conquest, he gathered round him the great men
+of his realm, it was still an English assembly with a sprinkling of
+strangers.  By the end of his reign it had changed, step by step,
+into an assembly of strangers with a sprinkling of Englishmen.
+
+This revolution, which practically transferred the greater part of
+the soil of England to the hands of strangers, was great indeed.
+But it must not be mistaken for a sudden blow, for an irregular
+scramble, for a formal proscription of Englishmen as such.
+William, according to his character and practice, was able to do
+all this gradually, according to legal forms, and without drawing
+any formal distinction between natives and strangers.  All land was
+held of the King of the English, according to the law of England.
+It may seem strange how such a process of spoliation, veiled under
+a legal fiction, could have been carried out without resistance.
+It was easier because it was gradual and piecemeal.  The whole
+country was not touched at once, nor even the whole of any one
+district.  One man lost his land while his neighbour kept his, and
+he who kept his land was not likely to join in the possible plots
+of the other.  And though the land had never seen so great a
+confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet
+there was nothing new in the thing itself.  Danes had settled under
+Cnut, and Normans and other Frenchmen under Edward.  Confiscation
+of land was the everyday punishment for various public and private
+crimes.  In any change, such as we should call a change of
+ministry, as at the fall and the return of Godwine, outlawry and
+forfeiture of lands was the usual doom of the weaker party, a
+milder doom than the judicial massacres of later ages.  Even a
+conquest of England was nothing new, and William at this stage
+contrasted favourably with Cnut, whose early days were marked by
+the death of not a few.  William, at any rate since his crowning,
+had shed the blood of no man.  Men perhaps thought that things
+might have been much worse, and that they were not unlikely to
+mend.  Anyhow, weakened, cowed, isolated, the people of the
+conquered shires submitted humbly to the Conqueror's will.  It
+needed a kind of oppression of which William himself was never
+guilty to stir them into actual revolt.
+
+
+The provocation was not long in coming.  Within three months after
+his coronation, William paid a visit to his native duchy.  The
+ruler of two states could not be always in either; he owed it to
+his old subjects to show himself among them in his new character;
+and his absence might pass as a sign of the trust he put in his new
+subjects.  But the means which he took to secure their obedience
+brought out his one weak point.  We cannot believe that he really
+wished to goad the people into rebellion; yet the choice of his
+lieutenants might seem almost like it.  He was led astray by
+partiality for his brother and for his dearest friend.  To Bishop
+Ode of Bayeux, and to William Fitz-Osbern, the son of his early
+guardian, he gave earldoms, that of Kent to Odo, that of Hereford
+to William.  The Conqueror was determined before all things that
+his kingdom should be united and obedient; England should not be
+split up like Gaul and Germany; he would have no man in England
+whose formal homage should carry with it as little of practical
+obedience as his own homage to the King of the French.  A Norman
+earl of all Wessex or all Mercia might strive after such a
+position.  William therefore forsook the old practice of dividing
+the whole kingdom into earldoms.  In the peaceful central shires he
+would himself rule through his sheriffs and other immediate
+officers; he would appoint earls only in dangerous border districts
+where they were needed as military commanders.  All William's earls
+were in fact marquesses, guardians of a march or frontier.  Ode had
+to keep Kent against attacks from the continent; William Fitz-
+Osbern had to keep Herefordshire against the Welsh and the
+independent English.  This last shire had its own local warfare.
+William's authority did not yet reach over all the shires beyond
+London and Hereford; but Harold had allowed some of Edward's Norman
+favourites to keep power there.  Hereford then and part of its
+shire formed an isolated part of William's dominions, while the
+lands around remained unsubdued.  William Fitz-Osbern had to guard
+this dangerous land as earl.  But during the King's absence both he
+and Ode received larger commissions as viceroys over the whole
+kingdom.  Ode guarded the South and William the North and North-
+East.  Norwich, a town dangerous from its easy communication with
+Denmark, was specially under his care.  The nominal earls of the
+rest of the land, Edwin, Morkere, and Waltheof, with Edgar, King of
+a moment, Archbishop Stigand, and a number of other chief men,
+William took with him to Normandy.  Nominally his cherished friends
+and guests, they went in truth, as one of the English Chroniclers
+calls them, as hostages.
+
+William's stay in Normandy lasted about six months.  It was chiefly
+devoted to rejoicings and religious ceremonies, but partly to
+Norman legislation.  Rich gifts from the spoils of England were
+given to the churches of Normandy; gifts richer still were sent to
+the Church of Rome whose favour had wrought so much for William.
+In exchange for the banner of Saint Peter, Harold's standard of the
+Fighting-man was sent as an offering to the head of all churches.
+While William was in Normandy, Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen died.
+The whole duchy named Lanfranc as his successor; but he declined
+the post, and was himself sent to Rome to bring the pallium for the
+new archbishop John, a kinsman of the ducal house.  Lanfranc
+doubtless refused the see of Rouen only because he was designed for
+a yet greater post in England; the subtlest diplomatist in Europe
+was not sent to Rome merely to ask for the pallium for Archbishop
+John.
+
+Meanwhile William's choice of lieutenants bore its fruit in
+England.  They wrought such oppression as William himself never
+wrought.  The inferior leaders did as they thought good, and the
+two earls restrained them not.  The earls meanwhile were in one
+point there faithfully carrying out the policy of their master in
+the building of castles; a work, which specially when the work of
+Ode and William Fitz-Osbern, is always spoken of by the native
+writers with marked horror.  The castles were the badges and the
+instruments of the Conquest, the special means of holding the land
+in bondage.  Meanwhile tumults broke forth in various parts.  The
+slaughter of Copsige, William's earl in Northumberland, took place
+about the time of the King's sailing for Normandy.  In independent
+Herefordshire the leading Englishman in those parts, Eadric, whom
+the Normans called the Wild, allied himself with the Welsh, harried
+the obedient lands, and threatened the castle of Hereford.  Nothing
+was done on either side beyond harrying and skirmishes; but
+Eadric's corner of the land remained unsubdued.  The men of Kent
+made a strange foreign alliance with Eustace of Boulogne, the
+brother-in-law of Edward, the man whose deeds had led to the great
+movement of Edward's reign, to the banishment and the return of
+Godwine.  He had fought against England on Senlac, and was one of
+four who had dealt the last blow to the wounded Harold.  But the
+oppression of Ode made the Kentishmen glad to seek any help against
+him.  Eustace, now William's enemy, came over, and gave help in an
+unsuccessful attack on Dover castle.  Meanwhile in the obedient
+shires men were making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued lands
+they were making ready for more active defence.  Many went beyond
+sea to ask for foreign help, specially in the kindred lands of
+Denmark and Northern Germany.  Against this threatening movement
+William's strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies for
+combined action.  The whole land never rose at once, and Danish
+help did not come at the times or in the shape when it could have
+done most good.
+
+
+The news of these movements brought William back to England in
+December.  He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at Westminster;
+there the absent Eustace was, by a characteristic stroke of policy,
+arraigned as a traitor.  He was a foreign prince against whom the
+Duke of the Normans might have led a Norman army.  But he had also
+become an English landowner, and in that character he was
+accountable to the King and Witan of England.  He suffered the
+traitor's punishment of confiscation of lands.  Afterwards he
+contrived to win back William's favour, and he left great English
+possessions to his second wife and his son.  Another stroke of
+policy was to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the hostile
+purposes of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelate
+who had been in high favour with both Edward and Harold,
+AEthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey.  It came perhaps of his mission that
+Swegen practically did nothing for two years.  The envoy's own life
+was a chequered one.  He lost William's favour, and sought shelter
+in Denmark.  He again regained William's favour--perhaps by some
+service at the Danish court--and died in possession of his abbey.
+
+It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William bestowed
+several great offices.  The earldom of Northumberland was vacant by
+the slaughter of two earls, the bishopric of Dorchester by the
+peaceful death of its bishop.  William had no real authority in any
+part of Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the diocese
+of Dorchester.  But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as in
+his own power.  It was now that he granted Northumberland to
+Gospatric.  The appointment to the bishopric was the beginning of a
+new system.  Englishmen were now to give way step by step to
+strangers in the highest offices and greatest estates of the land.
+He had already made two Norman earls, but they were to act as
+military commanders.  He now made an English earl, whose earldom
+was likely to be either nominal or fatal.  The appointment of
+Remigius of Fecamp to the see of Dorchester was of more real
+importance.  It is the beginning of William's ecclesiastical reign,
+the first step in William's scheme of making the Church his
+instrument in keeping down the conquered.  While William lived, no
+Englishman was appointed to a bishopric.  As bishoprics became
+vacant by death, foreigners were nominated, and excuses were often
+found for hastening a vacancy by deprivation.  At the end of
+William's reign one English bishop only was left.  With abbots, as
+having less temporal power than bishops, the rule was less strict.
+Foreigners were preferred, but Englishmen were not wholly shut out.
+And the general process of confiscation and regrant of lands was
+vigorously carried out.  The Kentish revolt and the general
+movement must have led to many forfeitures and to further grants to
+loyal men of either nation.  As the English Chronicles pithily puts
+it, "the King gave away every man's land."
+
+
+William could soon grant lands in new parts of England.  In
+February 1068 he for the first time went forth to warfare with
+those whom he called his subjects, but who had never submitted to
+him.  In the course of the year a large part of England was in arms
+against him.  But there was no concert; the West rose and the North
+rose; but the West rose first, and the North did not rise till the
+West had been subdued.  Western England threw off the purely
+passive state which had lasted through the year 1067.  Hitherto
+each side had left the other alone.  But now the men of the West
+made ready for a more direct opposition to the foreign government.
+If they could not drive William out of what he had already won,
+they would at least keep him from coming any further.  Exeter, the
+greatest city of the West, was the natural centre of resistance;
+the smaller towns, at least of Devonshire and Dorset entered into a
+league with the capital.  They seem to have aimed, like Italian
+cities in the like case, at the formation of a civic confederation,
+which might perhaps find it expedient to acknowledge William as an
+external lord, but which would maintain perfect internal
+independence.  Still, as Gytha, widow of Godwine, mother of Harold,
+was within the walls of Exeter, the movement was doubtless also in
+some sort on behalf of the House of Godwine.  In any case, Exeter
+and the lands and towns in its alliance with Exeter strengthened
+themselves in every way against attack.
+
+Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen on
+their own soil withstood one who, however he might cloke his
+enterprise, was to them simply a foreign invader.  But William was
+not yet, as he was in some later struggles, the de facto king of
+the whole land, whom all had acknowledged, and opposition to whom
+was in form rebellion.  He now held an intermediate position.  He
+was still an invader; for Exeter had never submitted to him; but
+the crowned King of the English, peacefully ruling over many
+shires, was hardly a mere invader; resistance to him would have the
+air of rebellion in the eyes of many besides William and his
+flatterers.  And they could not see, what we plainly see, what
+William perhaps dimly saw, that it was in the long run better for
+Exeter, or any other part of England, to share, even in conquest,
+the fate of the whole land, rather than to keep on a precarious
+independence to the aggravation of the common bondage.  This we
+feel throughout; William, with whatever motive, is fighting for the
+unity of England.  We therefore cannot seriously regret his
+successes.  But none the less honour is due to the men whom the
+duty of the moment bade to withstand him.  They could not see
+things as we see them by the light of eight hundred years.
+
+The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only of
+Exeter that we hear any details.  William never used force till he
+had tried negotiation.  He sent messengers demanding that the
+citizens should take oaths to him and receive him within their
+walls.  The choice lay now between unconditional submission and
+valiant resistance.  But the chief men of the city chose a middle
+course which could gain nothing.  They answered as an Italian city
+might have answered a Swabian Emperor.  They would not receive the
+King within their walls; they would take no oaths to him; but they
+would pay him the tribute which they had paid to earlier kings.
+That is, they would not have him as king, but only as overlord over
+a commonwealth otherwise independent.  William's answer was short;
+"It is not my custom to take subjects on those conditions."  He set
+out on his march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious English
+by the arms of the loyal English.  He called out the fyrd, the
+militia, of all or some of the shires under his obedience.  They
+answered his call; to disobey it would have needed greater courage
+than to wield the axe on Senlac.  This use of English troops became
+William's custom in all his later wars, in England and on the
+mainland; but of course he did not trust to English troops only.
+The plan of the campaign was that which had won Le Mans and London.
+The towns of Dorset were frightfully harried on the march to the
+capital of the West.  Disunion at once broke out; the leading men
+in Exeter sent to offer unconditional submission and to give
+hostages.  But the commonalty disowned the agreement;
+notwithstanding the blinding of one of the hostages before the
+walls, they defended the city valiantly for eighteen days.  It was
+only when the walls began to crumble away beneath William's mining-
+engines that the men of Exeter at last submitted to his mercy.  And
+William's mercy could be trusted.  No man was harmed in life, limb,
+or goods.  But, to hinder further revolts, a castle was at once
+begun, and the payments made by the city to the King were largely
+raised.
+
+Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, and
+thence to Flanders.  Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from thence, in
+the course of the same year and the next, they twice landed in
+Somerset and Devonshire.  The Irish Danes who followed them could
+not be kept back from plunder.  Englishmen as well as Normans
+withstood them, and the hopes of the House of Godwine came to an
+end.
+
+
+On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the whole
+West.  All the land south of the Thames was now in William's
+obedience.  Gloucestershire seems to have submitted at the same
+time; the submission of Worcestershire is without date.  A vast
+confiscation of lands followed, most likely by slow degrees.  Its
+most memorable feature is that nearly all Cornwall was granted to
+William's brother Robert Count of Mortain.  His vast estate grew
+into the famous Cornish earldom and duchy of later times.  Southern
+England was now conquered, and, as the North had not stirred during
+the stirring of the West, the whole land was outwardly at peace.
+William now deemed it safe to bring his wife to share his new
+greatness.  The Duchess Matilda came over to England, and was
+hallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop Ealdred.  We may
+believe that no part of his success gave William truer pleasure.
+But the presence of the Lady was important in another way.  It was
+doubtless by design that she gave birth on English soil to her
+youngest son, afterwards the renowned King Henry the First.  He
+alone of William's children was in any sense an Englishman.  Born
+on English ground, son of a crowned King and his Lady, Englishmen
+looked on him as a countryman.  And his father saw the wisdom of
+encouraging such a feeling.  Henry, surnamed in after days the
+Clerk, was brought up with special care; he was trained in many
+branches of learning unusual among the princes of his age, among
+them in a thorough knowledge of the tongue of his native land.
+
+
+The campaign of Exeter is of all William's English campaigns the
+richest in political teaching.  We see how near the cities of
+England came for a moment--as we shall presently see a chief city
+of northern Gaul--to running the same course as the cities of Italy
+and Provence.  Signs of the same tendency may sometimes be
+suspected elsewhere, but they are not so clearly revealed.
+William's later campaigns are of the deepest importance in English
+history; they are far richer in recorded personal actors than the
+siege of Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on the
+character of William and his statesmanship.  William is throughout
+ever ready, but never hasty--always willing to wait when waiting
+seems the best policy--always ready to accept a nominal success
+when there is a chance of turning it into a real one, but never
+accepting nominal success as a cover for defeat, never losing an
+inch of ground without at once taking measures to recover it.  By
+this means, he has in the former part of 1068 extended his dominion
+to the Land's End; before the end of the year he extends it to the
+Tees.  In the next year he has indeed to win it back again; but he
+does win it back and more also.  Early in 1070 he was at last, in
+deed as well as in name, full King over all England.
+
+The North was making ready for war while the war in the West went
+on, but one part of England did nothing to help the other.  In the
+summer the movement in the North took shape.  The nominal earls
+Edwin, Morkere, and Gospatric, with the AEtheling Edgar and others,
+left William's court to put themselves at the head of the movement.
+Edwin was specially aggrieved, because the king had promised him
+one of his daughters in marriage, but had delayed giving her to
+him.  The English formed alliances with the dependent princes of
+Wales and Scotland, and stood ready to withstand any attack.
+William set forth; as he had taken Exeter, he took Warwick, perhaps
+Leicester.  This was enough for Edwin and Morkere.  They submitted,
+and were again received to favour.  More valiant spirits withdrew
+northward, ready to defend Durham as the last shelter of
+independence, while Edgar and Gospatric fled to the court of
+Malcolm of Scotland.  William went on, receiving the submission of
+Nottingham and York; thence he turned southward, receiving on his
+way the submission of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon.  Again he
+deemed it his policy to establish his power in the lands which he
+had already won rather than to jeopard matters by at once pressing
+farther.  In the conquered towns he built castles, and he placed
+permanent garrisons in each district by granting estates to his
+Norman and other followers.  Different towns and districts suffered
+in different degrees, according doubtless to the measure of
+resistance met with in each.  Lincoln and Lincolnshire were on the
+whole favourably treated.  An unusual number of Englishmen kept
+lands and offices in city and shire.  At Leicester and Northampton,
+and in their shires, the wide confiscations and great destruction
+of houses point to a stout resistance.  And though Durham was still
+untouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose of
+attacking Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all
+favour a nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by the
+hands of the Bishop of Durham.
+
+If William's policy ever seems less prudent than usual, it was at
+the beginning of the next year, 1069.  The extreme North still
+stood out.  William had twice commissioned English earls of
+Northumberland to take possession if they could.  He now risked the
+dangerous step of sending a stranger.  Robert of Comines was
+appointed to the earldom forfeited by the flight of Gospatric.
+While it was still winter, he went with his force to Durham.  By
+help of the Bishop, he was admitted into the city, but he and his
+whole force were cut off by the people of Durham and its
+neighbourhood.  Robert's expedition in short led only to a revolt
+of York, where Edgar was received and siege was laid to the castle.
+William marched in person with all speed; he relieved the castle;
+he recovered the city and strengthened it by a second castle on the
+other side of the river.  Still he thought it prudent to take no
+present steps against Durham.  Soon after this came the second
+attempt of Harold's sons in the West.
+
+Later in this year William's final warfare for the kingdom began.
+In August, 1069 the long-promised help from Denmark came.  Swegen
+sent his brother Osbeorn and his sons Harold and Cnut, at the head
+of the whole strength of Denmark and of other Northern lands.  If
+the two enterprises of Harold's sons had been planned in concert
+with their Danish kinsmen, the invaders or deliverers from opposite
+sides had failed to act together.  Nor are Swegen's own objects
+quite clear.  He sought to deliver England from William and his
+Normans, but it is not so plain in whose interest he acted.  He
+would naturally seek the English crown for himself or for one of
+his sons; the sons of Harold he would rather make earls than kings.
+But he could feel no interest in the kingship of Edgar.  Yet, when
+the Danish fleet entered the Humber, and the whole force of the
+North came to meet it, the English host had the heir of Cerdic at
+its head.  It is now that Waltheof the son of Siward, Earl of
+Northampton and Huntingdon, first stands out as a leading actor.
+Gospatric too was there; but this time not Edwin and Morkere.
+Danes and English joined and marched upon York; the city was
+occupied; the castles were taken; the Norman commanders were made
+prisoners, but not till they had set fire to the city and burned
+the greater part of it, along with the metropolitan minster.  It is
+amazing to read that, after breaking down the castles, the English
+host dispersed, and the Danish fleet withdrew into the Humber.
+
+England was again ruined by lack of concert.  The news of the
+coming of the Danes led only to isolated movements which were put
+down piecemeal.  The men of Somerset and Dorset and the men of
+Devonshire and Cornwall were put down separately, and the movement
+in Somerset was largely put down by English troops.  The citizens
+of Exeter, as well as the Norman garrison of the castle, stood a
+siege on behalf of William.  A rising on the Welsh border under
+Eadric led only to the burning of Shrewsbury; a rising in
+Staffordshire was held by William to call for his own presence.
+But he first marched into Lindesey, and drove the crews of the
+Danish ships across into Holderness; there he left two Norman
+leaders, one of them his brother Robert of Mortain and Cornwall; he
+then went westward and subdued Staffordshire, and marched towards
+York by way of Nottingham.  A constrained delay by the Aire gave
+him an opportunity for negotiation with the Danish leaders.
+Osbeorn took bribes to forsake the English cause, and William
+reached and entered York without resistance.  He restored the
+castles and kept his Christmas in the half-burned city.  And now
+William forsook his usual policy of clemency.  The Northern shires
+had been too hard to win.  To weaken them, he decreed a merciless
+harrying of the whole land, the direct effects of which were seen
+for many years, and which left its mark on English history for
+ages.  Till the growth of modern industry reversed the relative
+position of Northern and Southern England, the old Northumbrian
+kingdom never fully recovered from the blow dealt by William, and
+remained the most backward part of the land.  Herein comes one of
+the most remarkable results of William's coming.  His greatest work
+was to make England a kingdom which no man henceforth thought of
+dividing.  But the circumstances of his conquest of Northern
+England ruled that for several centuries the unity of England
+should take the form of a distinct preponderance of Southern
+England over Northern.  William's reign strengthened every tendency
+that way, chiefly by the fearful blow now dealt to the physical
+strength and well-being of the Northern shires.  From one side
+indeed the Norman Conquest was truly a Saxon conquest.  The King of
+London and Winchester became more fully than ever king over the
+whole land.
+
+
+The Conqueror had now only to gather in what was still left to
+conquer.  But, as military exploits, none are more memorable than
+the winter marches which put William into full possession of
+England.  The lands beyond Tees still held out; in January 1070 he
+set forth to subdue them.  The Earls Waltheof and Gospatric made
+their submission, Waltheof in person, Gospatric by proxy.  William
+restored both of them to their earldoms, and received Waltheof to
+his highest favour, giving him his niece Judith in marriage.  But
+he systematically wasted the land, as he had wasted Yorkshire.  He
+then returned to York, and thence set forth to subdue the last city
+and shire that held out.  A fearful march led him to the one
+remaining fragment of free England, the unconquered land of
+Chester.  We know not how Chester fell; but the land was not won
+without fighting, and a frightful harrying was the punishment.  In
+all this we see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the character
+of the Conqueror.  Yet it is thoroughly characteristic.  All is
+calm, deliberate, politic.  William will have no more revolts, and
+he will at any cost make the land incapable of revolt.  Yet, as
+ever, there is no blood shed save in battle.  If men died of
+hunger, that was not William's doing; nay, charitable people like
+Abbot AEthelwig of Evesham might do what they could to help the
+sufferers.  But the lawful king, kept so long out of his kingdom,
+would, at whatever price, be king over the whole land.  And the
+great harrying of the northern shires was the price paid for
+William's kingship over them.
+
+At Chester the work was ended which had begun at Pevensey.  Less
+than three years and a half, with intervals of peace, had made the
+Norman invader king over all England.  He had won the kingdom; he
+had now to keep it.  He had for seventeen years to deal with
+revolts on both sides of the sea, with revolts both of Englishmen
+and of his own followers.  But in England his power was never
+shaken; in England he never knew defeat.  His English enemies he
+had subdued; the Danes were allowed to remain and in some sort to
+help in his work by plundering during the winter.  The King now
+marched to the Salisbury of that day, the deeply fenced hill of Old
+Sarum.  The men who had conquered England were reviewed in the
+great plain, and received their rewards.  Some among them had by
+failures of duty during the winter marches lost their right to
+reward.  Their punishment was to remain under arms forty days
+longer than their comrades.  William could trust himself to the
+very mutineers whom he had picked out for punishment.  He had now
+to begin his real reign; and the champion of the Church had before
+all things to reform the evil customs of the benighted islanders,
+and to give them shepherds of their souls who might guide them in
+the right way,
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND--1070-1086
+
+
+
+England was now fully conquered, and William could for a moment sit
+down quietly to the rule of the kingdom that he had won.  The time
+that immediately followed is spoken of as a time of comparative
+quiet, and of less oppression than the times either before or
+after.  Before and after, warfare, on one side of the sea or the
+other, was the main business.  Hitherto William has been winning
+his kingdom in arms.  Afterwards he was more constantly called away
+to his foreign dominions, and his absence always led to greater
+oppression in England.  Just now he had a moment of repose, when he
+could give his mind to the affairs of Church and State in England.
+Peace indeed was not quite unbroken.  Events were tending to that
+famous revolt in the Fenland which is perhaps the best remembered
+part of William's reign.  But even this movement was merely local,
+and did not seriously interfere with William's government.  He was
+now striving to settle the land in peace, and to make his rule as
+little grievous to the conquered as might be.  The harrying of
+Northumberland showed that he now shrank from no harshness that
+would serve his ends; but from mere purposeless oppression he was
+still free.  Nor was he ever inclined to needless change or to that
+scorn of the conquered which meaner conquerors have often shown.
+He clearly wished both to change and to oppress as little as he
+could.  This is a side of him which has been greatly misunderstood,
+largely through the book that passes for the History of Ingulf
+Abbot of Crowland.  Ingulf was William's English secretary; a real
+history of his writing would be most precious.  But the book that
+goes by his name is a forgery not older than the fourteenth
+century, and is in all points contradicted by the genuine documents
+of the time.  Thus the forger makes William try to abolish the
+English language and order the use of French in legal writings.
+This is pure fiction.  The truth is that, from the time of
+William's coming, English goes out of use in legal writings, but
+only gradually, and not in favour of French.  Ever since the coming
+of Augustine, English and Latin had been alternative tongues; after
+the coming of William English becomes less usual, and in the course
+of the twelfth century it goes out of use in favour of Latin.
+There are no French documents till the thirteenth century, and in
+that century English begins again.  Instead of abolishing the
+English tongue, William took care that his English-born son should
+learn it, and he even began to learn it himself.  A king of those
+days held it for his duty to hear and redress his subjects'
+complaints; he had to go through the land and see for himself that
+those who acted in his name did right among his people.  This
+earlier kings had done; this William wished to do; but he found his
+ignorance of English a hindrance.  Cares of other kinds checked his
+English studies, but he may have learned enough to understand the
+meaning of his own English charters.  Nor did William try, as he is
+often imagined to have done, to root out the ancient institutions
+of England, and to set up in their stead either the existing
+institutions of Normandy or some new institutions of his own
+devising.  The truth is that with William began a gradual change in
+the laws and customs of England, undoubtedly great, but far less
+than is commonly thought.  French names have often supplanted
+English, and have made the amount of change seem greater than it
+really was.  Still much change did follow on the Norman Conquest,
+and the Norman Conquest was so completely William's own act that
+all that came of it was in some sort his act also.  But these
+changes were mainly the gradual results of the state of things
+which followed William's coming; they were but very slightly the
+results of any formal acts of his.  With a foreign king and
+foreigners in all high places, much practical change could not fail
+to follow, even where the letter of the law was unchanged.  Still
+the practical change was less than if the letter of the law had
+been changed as well.  English law was administered by foreign
+judges; the foreign grantees of William held English land according
+to English law.  The Norman had no special position as a Norman; in
+every rank except perhaps the very highest and the very lowest, he
+had Englishmen to his fellows.  All this helped to give the Norman
+Conquest of England its peculiar character, to give it an air of
+having swept away everything English, while its real work was to
+turn strangers into Englishmen.  And that character was impressed
+on William's work by William himself.  The king claiming by legal
+right, but driven to assert his right by the sword, was unlike both
+the foreign king who comes in by peaceful succession and the
+foreign king who comes in without even the pretext of law.  The
+Normans too, if born soldiers, were also born lawyers, and no man
+was more deeply impressed with the legal spirit than William
+himself.  He loved neither to change the law nor to transgress the
+law, and he had little need to do either.  He knew how to make the
+law his instrument, and, without either changing or transgressing
+it, to use it to make himself all-powerful.  He thoroughly enjoyed
+that system of legal fictions and official euphemisms which marks
+his reign.  William himself became in some sort an Englishman, and
+those to whom he granted English lands had in some sort to become
+Englishmen in order to hold them.  The Norman stepped into the
+exact place of the Englishman whose land he held; he took his
+rights and his burthens, and disputes about those rights and
+burthens were judged according to English law by the witness of
+Englishmen.  Reigning over two races in one land, William would be
+lord of both alike, able to use either against the other in case of
+need.  He would make the most of everything in the feelings and
+customs of either that tended to strengthen his own hands.  And, in
+the state of things in which men then found themselves, whatever
+strengthened William's hands strengthened law and order in his
+kingdom.
+
+There was therefore nothing to lead William to make any large
+changes in the letter of the English law.  The powers of a King of
+the English, wielded as he knew how to wield them, made him as
+great as he could wish to be.  Once granting the original wrong of
+his coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there
+is singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror.  Of
+bloodshed, of wanton interference with law and usage, there is
+wonderfully little.  Englishmen and Normans were held to have
+settled down in peace under the equal protection of King William.
+The two races were drawing together; the process was beginning
+which, a hundred years later, made it impossible, in any rank but
+the highest and the lowest, to distinguish Norman from Englishman.
+Among the smaller landowners and the townsfolk this intermingling
+had already begun, while earls and bishops were not yet so
+exclusively Norman, nor had the free churls of England as yet sunk
+so low as at a later stage.  Still some legislation was needed to
+settle the relations of the two races.  King William proclaimed the
+"renewal of the law of King Edward."  This phrase has often been
+misunderstood; it is a common form when peace and good order are
+restored after a period of disturbance.  The last reign which is
+looked back to as to a time of good government becomes the standard
+of good government, and it is agreed between king and people,
+between contending races or parties, that things shall be as they
+were in the days of the model ruler.  So we hear in Normandy of the
+renewal of the law of Rolf, and in England of the renewal of the
+law of Cnut.  So at an earlier time Danes and Englishmen agreed in
+the renewal of the law of Edgar.  So now Normans and Englishmen
+agreed in the renewal of the law of Edward.  There was no code
+either of Edward's or of William's making.  William simply bound
+himself to rule as Edward had ruled.  But in restoring the law of
+King Edward, he added, "with the additions which I have decreed for
+the advantage of the people of the English."
+
+These few words are indeed weighty.  The little legislation of
+William's reign takes throughout the shape of additions.  Nothing
+old is repealed; a few new enactments are set up by the side of the
+old ones.  And these words describe, not only William's actual
+legislation, but the widest general effect of his coming.  The
+Norman Conquest did little towards any direct abolition of the
+older English laws or institutions.  But it set up some new
+institutions alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a few
+names, habits, and ways of looking at things, which gradually did
+their work.  In England no man has pulled down; many have added and
+modified.  Our law is still the law of King Edward with the
+additions of King William.  Some old institutions took new names;
+some new institutions with new names sprang up by the side of old
+ones.  Sometimes the old has lasted, sometimes the new.  We still
+have a king and not a roy; but he gathers round him a parliament
+and not a vitenagemot.  We have a sheriff and not a viscount; but
+his district is more commonly called a county than a shire.  But
+county and shire are French and English for the same thing, and
+"parliament" is simply French for the "deep speech" which King
+William had with his Witan.  The National Assembly of England has
+changed its name and its constitution more than once; but it has
+never been changed by any sudden revolution, never till later times
+by any formal enactment.  There was no moment when one kind of
+assembly supplanted another.  And this has come because our
+Conqueror was, both by his disposition and his circumstances, led
+to act as a preserver and not as a destroyer.
+
+The greatest recorded acts of William, administrative and
+legislative, come in the last days of his reign.  But there are
+several enactments of William belonging to various periods of his
+reign, and some of them to this first moment of peace.  Here we
+distinctly see William as an English statesman, as a statesman who
+knew how to work a radical change under conservative forms.  One
+enactment, perhaps the earliest of all, provided for the safety of
+the strangers who had come with him to subdue and to settle in the
+land.  The murder of a Norman by an Englishman, especially of a
+Norman intruder by a dispossessed Englishman, was a thing that
+doubtless often happened.  William therefore provides for the
+safety of those whom he calls "the men whom I brought with me or
+who have come after me;" that is, the warriors of Senlac, Exeter,
+and York.  These men are put within his own peace; wrong done to
+them is wrong done to the King, his crown and dignity.  If the
+murderer cannot be found, the lord and, failing him, the hundred,
+must make payment to the King.  Of this grew the presentment of
+Englishry, one of the few formal badges of distinction between the
+conquering and the conquered race.  Its practical need could not
+have lasted beyond a generation or two, but it went on as a form
+ages after it had lost all meaning.  An unknown corpse, unless it
+could be proved that the dead man was English, was assumed to be
+that of a man who had come with King William, and the fine was
+levied.  Some other enactments were needed when two nations lived
+side by side in the same land.  As in earlier times, Roman and
+barbarian each kept his own law, so now for some purposes the
+Frenchman--"Francigena"--and the Englishman kept their own law.
+This is chiefly with regard to the modes of appealing to God's
+judgement in doubtful cases.  The English did this by ordeal, the
+Normans by wager of battle.  When a man of one nation appealed a
+man of the other, the accused chose the mode of trial.  If an
+Englishman appealed a Frenchman and declined to prove his charge
+either way, the Frenchman might clear himself by oath.  But these
+privileges were strictly confined to Frenchmen who had come with
+William and after him.  Frenchmen who had in Edward's time settled
+in England as the land of their own choice, reckoned as Englishmen.
+Other enactments, fresh enactments of older laws, touched both
+races.  The slave trade was rife in its worst form; men were sold
+out of the land, chiefly to the Danes of Ireland.  Earlier kings
+had denounced the crime, and earlier bishops had preached against
+it.  William denounced it again under the penalty of forfeiture of
+all lands and goods, and Saint Wulfstan, the Bishop of Worcester,
+persuaded the chief offenders, Englishmen of Bristol, to give up
+their darling sin for a season.  Yet in the next reign Anselm and
+his synod had once more to denounce the crime under spiritual
+penalties, when they had no longer the strong arm of William to
+enforce them.
+
+Another law bears more than all the personal impress of William.
+In it he at once, on one side, forestalls the most humane theories
+of modern times, and on the other sins most directly against them.
+His remarkable unwillingness to put any man to death, except among
+the chances of the battle-field, was to some extent the feeling of
+his age.  With him the feeling takes the shape of a formal law.  He
+forbids the infliction of death for any crime whatever.  But those
+who may on this score be disposed to claim the Conqueror as a
+sympathizer will be shocked at the next enactment.  Those crimes
+which kings less merciful than William would have punished with
+death are to be punished with loss of eyes or other foul and cruel
+mutilations.  Punishments of this kind now seem more revolting than
+death, though possibly, now as then, the sufferer himself might
+think otherwise.  But in those days to substitute mutilation for
+death, in the case of crimes which were held to deserve death, was
+universally deemed an act of mercy.  Grave men shrank from sending
+their fellow-creatures out of the world, perhaps without time for
+repentance; but physical sympathy with physical suffering had
+little place in their minds.  In the next century a feeling against
+bodily mutilation gradually comes in; but as yet the mildest and
+most thoughtful men, Anselm himself, make no protest against it
+when it is believed to be really deserved.  There is no sign of any
+general complaint on this score.  The English Chronicler applauds
+the strict police of which mutilation formed a part, and in one
+case he deliberately holds it to be the fitting punishment of the
+offence.  In fact, when penal settlements were unknown and legal
+prisons were few and loathsome, there was something to be said for
+a punishment which disabled the criminal from repeating his
+offence.  In William's jurisprudence mutilation became the ordinary
+sentence of the murderer, the robber, the ravisher, sometimes also
+of English revolters against William's power.  We must in short
+balance his mercy against the mercy of Kirk and Jeffreys.
+
+The ground on which the English Chronicler does raise his wail on
+behalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the
+forests and the extortions of money with which he charges the
+Conqueror.  In both these points the royal hand became far heavier
+under the Norman rule.  In both William's character grew darker as
+he grew older.  He is charged with unlawful exactions of money, in
+his character alike of sovereign and of landlord.  We read of his
+sharp practice in dealing with the profits of the royal demesnes.
+He would turn out the tenant to whom he had just let the land, if
+another offered a higher rent.  But with regard to taxation, we
+must remember that William's exactions, however heavy at the time,
+were a step in the direction of regular government.  In those days
+all taxation was disliked.  Direct taking of the subject's money by
+the King was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified only
+by some extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hire
+soldiers against them.  Men long after still dreamed that the King
+could "live of his own," that he could pay all expenses of his
+court and government out of the rents and services due to him as a
+landowner, without asking his people for anything in the character
+of sovereign.  Demands of money on behalf of the King now became
+both heavier and more frequent.  And another change which had long
+been gradually working now came to a head.  When, centuries later,
+the King was bidden to "live of his own," men had forgotten that
+the land of the King had once been the land of the nation.  In all
+Teutonic communities, great and small, just as in the city
+communities of Greece and Italy, the community itself was a chief
+landowner.  The nation had its folkland, its ager publicus, the
+property of no one man but of the whole state.  Out of this, by the
+common consent, portions might be cut off and booked--granted by a
+written document--to particular men as their own bookland.  The
+King might have his private estate, to be dealt with at his own
+pleasure, but of the folkland, the land of the nation, he was only
+the chief administrator, bound to act by the advice of his Witan.
+But in this case more than in others, the advice of the Witan could
+not fail to become formal; the folkland, ever growing through
+confiscations, ever lessening through grants, gradually came to be
+looked on as the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought
+good.  We must not look for any change formally enacted; but in
+Edward's day the notion of folkland, as the possession of the
+nation and not of the King, could have been only a survival, and in
+William's day even the survival passed away.  The land which was
+practically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of course,
+Terra Regis, the land of King William.  That land was now enlarged
+by greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than ever.
+For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land of
+William.  And far more than had been the land of the nation
+remained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good.
+
+In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change.
+But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to
+certain tendencies which had been long afloat.  And out of them, in
+the next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a
+systematic code of oppression.  Yet even in his work there is
+little of formal change.  There are no laws of William Rufus.  The
+so called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and
+the like, on the part of the lord, the ancient heriot developed
+into the later relief, all these things were in the germ under
+William, as they had been in the germ long before him.  In the
+hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom;
+their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the
+First which promises to reform their abuses.  Thus the Conqueror
+clearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his
+nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on
+grounds of policy.  Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular
+claim, which of course was made a means of extorting money.  Under
+Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulated
+and modified, it is legally established.
+
+The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William,
+greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at
+all changed in outward form.  Like the kings that were before him,
+he "wore his crown" at the three great feasts, at Easter at
+Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at
+Gloucester.  Like the kings that were before him, he gathered
+together the great men of the realm, and when need was, the small
+men also.  Nothing seems to have been changed in the constitution
+or the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have been
+utterly changed.  The innermost circle, earls, bishops, great
+officers of state and household, gradually changed from a body of
+Englishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangers
+among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places.  The
+result of their "deep speech" with William was not likely to be
+other than an assent to William's will.  The ordinary freeman did
+not lose his abstract right to come and shout "Yea, yea," to any
+addition that King William made to the law of King Edward.  But
+there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King William
+thought fit to bid him.  But once at least William did gather
+together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of the
+smallest account.  On one point the Conqueror had fully made up his
+mind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom through
+all succeeding ages.  The realm of England was to be one and
+indivisible.  No ruler or subject in the kingdom of England should
+again dream that that kingdom could be split asunder.  When he
+offered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part of
+it, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offer
+would be refused.  No such offer should be heard of again.  There
+should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund,
+between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere
+had dreamed of in later times.  Nor should the kingdom be split
+asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best
+understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West,
+had split asunder.  He would have no dukes or earls who might
+become kings in all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom.  No
+man in his realm should be to him as he was to his overlord at
+Paris.  No man in his realm should plead duty towards an immediate
+lord as an excuse for breach of duty towards the lord of that
+immediate lord.  Hence William's policy with regard to earldoms.
+There was to be nothing like the great governments which had been
+held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl of the West-Saxons or
+the Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the Normans to be endured
+by one who was Duke of the Normans himself.  The earl, even of the
+king's appointment, still represented the separate being of the
+district over which he was set.  He was the king's representative
+rather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and not a
+prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and might
+easily grow into a prince.  And at last, at the very end of his
+reign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step that
+made England for ever one.  In 1086 every land-owner in England
+swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and
+to defend him against his enemies.  The subject's duty to the King
+was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord.
+When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly
+government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of
+both.  Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an
+English statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards
+the later making of England, than this memorable act of the
+Conqueror.  Here indeed is an addition which William made to the
+law of Edward for the truest good of the English folk.  And yet no
+enactment has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood.  Lawyer
+after lawyer has set down in his book that, at the assembly of
+Salisbury in 1086, William introduced "the feudal system."  If the
+words "feudal system" have any meaning, the object of the law now
+made was to hinder any "feudal system" from coming into England.
+William would be king of a kingdom, head of a commonwealth,
+personal lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a King of
+the French, external lord of princes whose subjects owed him no
+allegiance.  This greatest monument of the Conqueror's
+statesmanship was carried into effect in a special assembly of the
+English nation gathered on the first day of August 1086 on the
+great plain of Salisbury.  Now, perhaps for the first time, we get
+a distinct foreshadowing of Lords and Commons.  The Witan, the
+great men of the realm, and "the landsitting men," the whole body
+of landowners, are now distinguished.  The point is that William
+required the personal presence of every man whose personal
+allegiance he thought worth having.  Every man in the mixed
+assembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the King's own men and
+the men of other lords, took the oath and became the man of King
+William.  On that day England became for ever a kingdom one and
+indivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed of parting
+asunder.
+
+
+The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of
+William's later reign; it comes here as the last act of that
+general settlement which began in 1070.  That settlement, besides
+its secular side, has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat
+different character.  In both William's coming brought the island
+kingdom into a closer connexion with the continent; and brought a
+large displacement of Englishmen and a large promotion of
+strangers.  But on the ecclesiastical side, though the changes were
+less violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new state of
+things.  The religious missionary was more inclined to innovate
+than the military conqueror.  Here William not only added but
+changed; on one point he even proclaimed that the existing law of
+England was bad.  Certainly the religious state of England was
+likely to displease churchmen from the mainland.  The English
+Church, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that very
+reason, less dependent on her parent.  She was a free colony, not a
+conquered province.  The English Church too was most distinctly
+national; no land came so near to that ideal state of things in
+which the Church is the nation on its religious side.  Papal
+authority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a
+less careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal things
+and jurisdictions.  Two friendly powers could take liberties with
+each other.  The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as
+well as with temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient laws
+blames any assembly that did otherwise.  Bishop and earl sat
+together in the local Gemot, to deal with many matters which,
+according to continental ideas, should have been dealt with in
+separate courts.  And, by what in continental eyes seemed a strange
+laxity of discipline, priests, bishops, members of capitular
+bodies, were often married.  The English diocesan arrangements were
+unlike continental models.  In Gaul, by a tradition of Roman date,
+the bishop was bishop of the city.  His diocese was marked by the
+extent of the civil jurisdiction of the city.  His home, his head
+church, his bishopstool in the head church, were all in the city.
+In Teutonic England the bishop was commonly bishop, not of a city
+but of a tribe or district; his style was that of a tribe; his
+home, his head church, his bishopstool, might be anywhere within
+the territory of that tribe.  Still, on the greatest point of all,
+matters in England were thoroughly to William's liking; nowhere did
+the King stand forth more distinctly as the Supreme Governor of the
+Church.  In England, as in Normandy, the right of the sovereign to
+the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was ancient and
+undisputed.  What Edward had freely done, William went on freely
+doing, and Hildebrand himself never ventured on a word of
+remonstrance against a power which he deemed so wrongful in the
+hands of his own sovereign.  William had but to stand on the rights
+of his predecessors.  When Gregory asked for homage for the crown
+which he had in some sort given, William answered indeed as an
+English king.  What the kings before him had done for or paid to
+the Roman see, that would he do and pay; but this no king before
+him had ever done, nor would he be the first to do it.  But while
+William thus maintained the rights of his crown, he was willing and
+eager to do all that seemed needful for ecclesiastical reform.  And
+the general result of his reform was to weaken the insular
+independence of England, to make her Church more like the other
+Churches of the West, and to increase the power of the Roman
+Bishop.
+
+William had now a fellow-worker in his taste.  The subtle spirit
+which had helped to win his kingdom was now at his side to help him
+to rule it.  Within a few months after the taking of Chester
+Lanfranc sat on the throne of Augustine.  As soon as the actual
+Conquest was over, William began to give his mind to ecclesiastical
+matters.  It might look like sacrilege when he caused all the
+monasteries of England to be harried.  But no harm was done to the
+monks or to their possessions.  The holy houses were searched for
+the hoards which the rich men of England, fearing the new king, had
+laid up in the monastic treasuries.  William looked on these hoards
+as part of the forfeited goods of rebels, and carried them off
+during the Lent of 1070.  This done, he sat steadily down to the
+reform of the English Church.
+
+He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid,
+Bishop of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time of
+Edward.  It was a kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest,
+when, at the assembly held at Winchester in 1070, the King's crown
+was placed on his head by Ermenfrid.  The work of deposing English
+prelates and appointing foreign successors now began.  The primacy
+of York was regularly vacant; Ealdred had died as the Danes sailed
+up the Humber to assault or to deliver his city.  The primacy of
+Canterbury was to be made vacant by the deposition of Stigand.  His
+canonical position had always been doubtful; neither Harold nor
+William had been crowned by him; yet William had treated him
+hitherto with marked courtesy, and he had consecrated at least one
+Norman bishop, Remigius of Dorchester.  He was now deprived both of
+the archbishopric and of the bishopric of Winchester which he held
+with it, and was kept under restraint for the rest of his life.
+According to foreign canonical rules the sentence may pass as just;
+but it marked a stage in the conquest of England when a stout-
+hearted Englishman was removed from the highest place in the
+English Church to make way for the innermost counsellor of the
+Conqueror.  In the Pentecostal assembly, held at Windsor, Lanfranc
+was appointed archbishop; his excuses were overcome by his old
+master Herlwin of Bec; he came to England, and on August 15, 1070
+he was consecrated to the primacy.
+
+Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies.
+The see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man of
+high character and memorable in the local history of his see.  The
+abbey of Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who had
+received the staff from the uncrowned Eadgar.  It was only by rich
+gifts that he had turned away the wrath of William from his house.
+The Fenland was perhaps already stirring, and the Abbot of
+Peterborough might have to act as a military commander.  In this
+case the prelate appointed, a Norman named Turold, was accordingly
+more of a soldier than of a monk.  From these assemblies of 1070
+the series of William's ecclesiastical changes goes on.  As the
+English bishops die or are deprived, strangers take their place.
+They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who became Bishop of Durham
+in 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine who had been largely
+favoured in Edward's day.  At the time of William's death Wulfstan
+was the only Englishman who kept a bishopric.  Even his deprivation
+had once been thought of.  The story takes a legendary shape, but
+it throws an important light on the relations of Church and State
+in England.  In an assembly held in the West Minster Wulfstan is
+called on by William and Lanfranc to give up his staff.  He
+refuses; he will give it back to him who gave it, and places it on
+the tomb of his dead master Edward.  No of his enemies can move it.
+The sentence is recalled, and the staff yields to his touch.
+Edward was not yet a canonized saint; the appeal is simply from the
+living and foreign king to the dead and native king.  This legend,
+growing up when Western Europe was torn in pieces by the struggle
+about investitures, proves better than the most authentic documents
+how the right which Popes denied to Emperors was taken for granted
+in the case of an English king.  But, while the spoils of England,
+temporal and spiritual, were thus scattered abroad among men of the
+conquering race, two men at least among them refused all share in
+plunder which they deemed unrighteous.  One gallant Norman knight,
+Gulbert of Hugleville, followed William through all his campaigns,
+but when English estates were offered as his reward, he refused to
+share in unrighteous gains, and went back to the lands of his
+fathers which he could hold with a good conscience.  And one monk,
+Wimund of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused bishoprics and abbeys,
+but rebuked the Conqueror for wrong and robbery.  And William bore
+no grudge against his censor, but, when the archbishopric of Rouen
+became vacant, he offered it to the man who had rebuked him.  Among
+the worthies of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly claim a
+place, but a place should surely be theirs among the men whom
+England honours.
+
+
+The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in our
+history.  In the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in the
+next reign, the plough of the English Church was for seventeen
+years drawn by two oxen of equal strength.  By ancient English
+custom the Archbishop of Canterbury was the King's special
+counsellor, the special representative of his Church and people.
+Lanfranc cannot be charged with any direct oppression; yet in the
+hands of a stranger who had his spiritual conquest to make, the
+tribunitian office of former archbishops was lost in that of chief
+minister of the sovereign.  In the first action of their joint
+rule, the interest of king and primate was the same.  Lanfranc
+sought for a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority of
+Canterbury over the rival metropolis of York.  And this fell in
+with William's schemes for the consolidation of the kingdom.  The
+political motive is avowed.  Northumberland, which had been so hard
+to subdue and which still lay open to Danish invaders or
+deliverers, was still dangerous.  An independent Archbishop of York
+might consecrate a King of the Northumbrians, native or Danish, who
+might grow into a King of the English.  The Northern metropolitan
+had unwillingly to admit the superiority, and something more, of
+the Southern.  The caution of William and his ecclesiastical
+adviser reckoned it among possible chances that even Thomas of
+Bayeux might crown an invading Cnut or Harold in opposition to his
+native sovereign and benefactor.
+
+For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his
+minister too wisely.  The objects of the two colleagues were not
+always the same.  Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was no
+zealot for extravagant papal claims.  The caution with which he
+bore himself during the schism which followed the strife between
+Gregory and Henry brought on him more than one papal censure.  Yet
+the general tendency of his administration was towards the growth
+of ecclesiastical, and even of papal, claims.  William never
+dreamed of giving up his ecclesiastical supremacy or of exempting
+churchmen from the ordinary power of the law.  But the division of
+the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the increased frequency
+of synods distinct from the general assemblies of the realm--even
+though the acts of those synods needed the royal assent--were steps
+towards that exemption of churchmen from the civil power which was
+asserted in one memorable saying towards the end of William's own
+reign.  William could hold his own against Hildebrand himself; yet
+the increased intercourse with Rome, the more frequent presence of
+Roman Legates, all tended to increase the papal claims and the
+deference yielded to them.  William refused homage to Gregory; but
+it is significant that Gregory asked for it.  It was a step towards
+the day when a King of England was glad to offer it.  The increased
+strictness as to the marriage of the clergy tended the same way.
+Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full rigour of Hildebrand's
+decrees.  Marriage was forbidden for the future; the capitular
+clergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of the
+parish priest was respected.  In another point William directly
+helped to undermine his own authority and the independence of his
+kingdom.  He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority of
+the diocesan bishop.  With this began a crowd of such exemptions,
+which, by weakening local authority, strengthened the power of the
+Roman see.  All these things helped on Hildebrand's great scheme
+which made the clergy everywhere members of one distinct and
+exclusive body, with the Roman Bishop at their head.  Whatever
+tended to part the clergy from other men tended to weaken the
+throne of every king.  While William reigned with Lanfranc at his
+side, these things were not felt; but the seed was sown for the
+controversy between Henry and Thomas and for the humiliation of
+John.
+
+Even those changes of Lanfranc's primacy which seem of purely
+ecclesiastical concern all helped, in some way to increase the
+intercourse between England and the continent or to break down some
+insular peculiarity.  And whatever did this increased the power of
+Rome.  Even the decree of 1075 that bishoprics should be removed to
+the chief cities of their dioceses helped to make England more like
+Gaul or Italy.  So did the fancy of William's bishops and abbots
+for rebuilding their churches on a greater scale and in the last
+devised continental style.  All tended to make England less of
+another world.  On the other hand, one insular peculiarity well
+served the purposes of the new primate.  Monastic chapters in
+episcopal churches were almost unknown out of England.  Lanfranc,
+himself a monk, favoured monks in this matter also.  In several
+churches the secular canons were displaced by monks.  The corporate
+spirit of the regulars, and their dependence on Rome, was far
+stronger than that of the secular clergy.  The secular chapters
+could be refractory, but the disputes between them and their
+bishops were mainly of local importance; they form no such part of
+the general story of ecclesiastical and papal advance as the long
+tale of the quarrel between the archbishops and the monks of Christ
+Church.
+
+Lanfranc survived William, and placed the crown on the head of his
+successor.  The friendship between king and archbishop remained
+unbroken through their joint lives.  Lanfranc's acts were William's
+acts; what the Primate did must have been approved by the King.
+How far William's acts were Lanfranc's acts it is less easy to say.
+But the Archbishop was ever a trusted minister, and a trusted
+counsellor, and in the King's frequent absences from England, he
+often acted as his lieutenant.  We do not find him actually taking
+a part in warfare, but he duly reports military successes to his
+sovereign.  It was William's combined wisdom and good luck to
+provide himself with a counsellor than whom for his immediate
+purposes none could be better.  A man either of a higher or a lower
+moral level than Lanfranc, a saint like Anselm or one of the mere
+worldly bishops of the time, would not have done his work so well.
+William needed an ecclesiastical statesman, neither unscrupulous
+nor over-scrupulous, and he found him in the lawyer of Pavia, the
+doctor of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the abbot of Saint Stephen's.
+If Lanfranc sometimes unwittingly outwitted both his master and
+himself, if his policy served the purposes of Rome more than suited
+the purposes of either, that is the common course of human affairs.
+Great men are apt to forget that systems which they can work
+themselves cannot be worked by smaller men.  From this error
+neither William nor Lanfranc was free.  But, from their own point
+of view, it was their only error.  Their work was to subdue
+England, soul and body; and they subdued it.  That work could not
+be done without great wrong:  but no other two men of that day
+could have done it with so little wrong.  The shrinking from
+needless and violent change which is so strongly characteristic of
+William, and less strongly of Lanfranc also, made their work at the
+time easier to be done; in the course of ages it made it easier to
+be undone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM--1070-1086
+
+
+
+The years which saw the settlement of England, though not years of
+constant fighting like the two years between the march to Exeter
+and the fall of Chester, were not years of perfect peace.  William
+had to withstand foes on both sides of the sea, to withstand foes
+in his own household, to undergo his first defeat, to receive his
+first wound in personal conflict.  Nothing shook his firm hold
+either on duchy or kingdom; but in his later years his good luck
+forsook him.  And men did not fail to connect this change in his
+future with a change in himself, above all with one deed of blood
+which stands out as utterly unlike all his other recorded acts.
+
+But the amount of warfare which William had to go through in these
+later years was small compared with the great struggles of his
+earlier days.  There is no tale to tell like the war of Val-es-
+dunes, like the French invasions of Normandy, like the campaigns
+that won England.  One event only of the earlier time is repeated
+almost as exactly as an event can be repeated.  William had won
+Maine once; he had now to win it again, and less thoroughly.  As
+Conqueror his work is done; a single expedition into Wales is the
+only campaign of this part of his life that led to any increase of
+territory.
+
+When William sat down to the settlement of his kingdom after the
+fall of Chester, he was in the strictest sense full king over all
+England.  For the moment the whole land obeyed him; at no later
+moment did any large part of the land fail to obey him.  All
+opposition was now revolt.  Men were no longer keeping out an
+invader; when they rose, they rose against a power which, however
+wrongfully, was the established government of the land.  Two such
+movements took place.  One was a real revolt of Englishmen against
+foreign rule.  The other was a rebellion of William's own earls in
+their own interests, in which English feeling went with the King.
+Both were short sharp struggles which stand out boldly in the tale.
+More important in the general story, though less striking in
+detail, are the relations of William to the other powers in and
+near the isle of Britain.  With the crown of the West-Saxon kings,
+he had taken up their claims to supremacy over the whole island,
+and probably beyond it.  And even without such claims, border
+warfare with his Welsh and Scottish neighbours could not be
+avoided.  Counting from the completion of the real conquest of
+England in 1070, there were in William's reign three distinct
+sources of disturbance.  There were revolts within the kingdom of
+England.  There was border warfare in Britain.  There were revolts
+in William's continental dominions.  And we may add actual foreign
+warfare or threats of foreign warfare, affecting William, sometimes
+in his Norman, sometimes in his English character.
+
+With the affairs of Wales William had little personally to do.  In
+this he is unlike those who came immediately before and after him.
+In the lives of Harold and of William Rufus personal warfare
+against the Welsh forms an important part.  William the Great
+commonly left this kind of work to the earls of the frontier, to
+Hugh of Chester, Roger of Shrewsbury, and to his early friend
+William of Hereford, so long as that fierce warrior's life lasted.
+These earls were ever at war with the Welsh princes, and they
+extended the English kingdom at their cost.  Once only did the King
+take a personal share in the work, when he entered South Wales, in
+1081.  We hear vaguely of his subduing the land and founding
+castles; we see more distinctly that he released many subjects who
+were in British bondage, and that he went on a religious pilgrimage
+to Saint David's.  This last journey is in some accounts connected
+with schemes for the conquest of Ireland.  And in one most
+remarkable passage of the English Chronicle, the writer for once
+speculates as to what might have happened but did not.  Had William
+lived two years longer, he would have won Ireland by his wisdom
+without weapons.  And if William had won Ireland either by wisdom
+or by weapons, he would assuredly have known better how to deal
+with it than most of those who have come after him.  If any man
+could have joined together the lands which God has put asunder,
+surely it was he.  This mysterious saying must have a reference to
+some definite act or plan of which we have no other record.  And
+some slight approach to the process of winning Ireland without
+weapons does appear in the ecclesiastical intercourse between
+England and Ireland which now begins.  Both the native Irish
+princes and the Danes of the east coast begin to treat Lanfranc as
+their metropolitan, and to send bishops to him for consecration.
+The name of the King of the English is never mentioned in the
+letters which passed between the English primate and the kings and
+bishops of Ireland.  It may be that William was biding his time for
+some act of special wisdom; but our speculations cannot go any
+further than those of the Peterborough Chronicler.
+
+Revolt within the kingdom and invasion from without both began in
+the year in which the Conquest was brought to an end.  William's
+ecclesiastical reforms were interrupted by the revolt of the
+Fenland.  William's authority had never been fully acknowledged in
+that corner of England, while he wore his crown and held his
+councils elsewhere.  But the place where disturbances began, the
+abbey of Peterborough, was certainly in William's obedience.  The
+warfare made memorable by the name of Hereward began in June 1070,
+and a Scottish harrying of Northern England, the second of five
+which are laid to the charge of Malcolm, took place in the same
+year, and most likely about the same time.  The English movement is
+connected alike with the course of the Danish fleet and with the
+appointment of Turold to the abbey of Peterborough.  William had
+bribed the Danish commanders to forsake their English allies, and
+he allowed them to ravage the coast.  A later bribe took them back
+to Denmark; but not till they had shown themselves in the waters of
+Ely.  The people, largely of Danish descent, flocked to them,
+thinking, as the Chronicler says, that they would win the whole
+land.  The movement was doubtless in favour of the kingship of
+Swegen.  But nothing was done by Danes and English together save to
+plunder Peterborough abbey.  Hereward, said to have been the nephew
+of Turold's English predecessor, doubtless looked on the holy
+place, under a Norman abbot, as part of the enemy's country.
+
+The name of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction,
+old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his
+real history.  His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he
+was assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of
+Earl Leofric.  For some unknown cause, he had been banished in the
+days of Edward or of Harold.  He now came back to lead his
+countrymen against William.  He was the soul of the movement of
+which the abbey of Ely became the centre.  The isle, then easily
+defensible, was the last English ground on which the Conqueror was
+defied by Englishmen fighting for England.  The men of the Fenland
+were zealous; the monks of Ely were zealous; helpers came in from
+other parts of England.  English leaders left their shelter in
+Scotland to share the dangers of their countrymen; even Edwin and
+Morkere at last plucked up heart to leave William's court and join
+the patriotic movement.  Edwin was pursued; he was betrayed by
+traitors; he was overtaken and slain, to William's deep grief, we
+are told.  His brother reached the isle, and helped in its defence.
+William now felt that the revolt called for his own presence and
+his full energies.  The isle was stoutly attacked and stoutly
+defended, till, according to one version, the monks betrayed the
+stronghold to the King.  According to another, Morkere was induced
+to surrender by promises of mercy which William failed to fulfil.
+In any case, before the year 1071 was ended, the isle of Ely was in
+William's hands.  Hereward alone with a few companions made their
+way out by sea.  William was less merciful than usual; still no man
+was put to death.  Some were mutilated, some imprisoned; Morkere
+and other chief men spent the rest of their days in bonds.  The
+temper of the Conqueror had now fearfully hardened.  Still he could
+honour a valiant enemy; those who resisted to the last fared best.
+All the legends of Hereward's later days speak of him as admitted
+to William's peace and favour.  One makes him die quietly, another
+kills him at the hands of Norman enemies, but not at William's
+bidding or with William's knowledge.  Evidence a little better
+suggests that he bore arms for his new sovereign beyond the sea;
+and an entry in Domesday also suggests that he held lands under
+Count Robert of Mortain in Warwickshire.  It would suit William's
+policy, when he received Hereward to his favour, to make him
+exchange lands near to the scene of his exploits for lands in a
+distant shire held under the lordship of the King's brother.
+
+Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolm
+ravaged Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there must
+have been little left to ravage.  Meanwhile the AEtheling Edgar and
+his sisters, with other English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland,
+and were hospitably received.  At the same time Gospatric, now
+William's earl in Northumberland, retaliated by a harrying of
+Scottish Cumberland, which provoked Malcolm to greater cruelties.
+It was said that there was no house in Scotland so poor that it had
+not an English bondman.  Presently some of Malcolm's English guests
+joined the defenders of Ely; those of highest birth stayed in
+Scotland, and Malcolm, after much striving, persuaded Margaret the
+sister of Edgar to become his wife.  Her praises are written in
+Scottish history, and the marriage had no small share in the
+process which made the Scottish kings and the lands which formed
+their real kingdom practically English.  The sons and grandsons of
+Margaret, sprung of the Old-English kingly house, were far more
+English within their own realm than the Norman and Angevin kings of
+Southern England.  But within the English border men looked at
+things with other eyes.  Thrice again did Malcolm ravage England;
+two and twenty years later he was slain in his last visit of havoc.
+William meanwhile and his earls at least drew to themselves some
+measure of loyalty from the men of Northern England as the
+guardians of the land against the Scot.
+
+For the present however Malcolm's invasion was only avenged by
+Gospatric's harrying in Cumberland.  The year 1071 called William
+to Ely; in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed on
+the mainland; in August he found leisure for a march against
+Scotland.  He went as an English king, to assert the rights of the
+English crown, to avenge wrongs done to the English land; and on
+such an errand Englishmen followed him gladly.  Eadric, the
+defender of Herefordshire, had made his peace with the King, and he
+now held a place of high honour in his army.  But if William met
+with any armed resistance on his Scottish expedition, it did not
+amount to a pitched battle.  He passed through Lothian into
+Scotland; he crossed Forth and drew near to Tay, and there, by the
+round tower of Abernethy, the King of Scots swore oaths and gave
+hostages and became the man of the King of the English.  William
+might now call himself, like his West-Saxon predecessors, Bretwalda
+and Basileus of the isle of Britain.  This was the highest point of
+his fortune.  Duke of the Normans, King of the English, he was
+undisputed lord from the march of Anjou to the narrow sea between
+Caithness and Orkney.
+
+The exact terms of the treaty between William's royal vassal and
+his overlord are unknown.  But one of them was clearly the removal
+of Edgar from Scotland.  Before long he was on the continent.
+William had not yet learned that Edgar was less dangerous in
+Britain than in any other part of the world, and that he was safest
+of all in William's own court.  Homage done and hostages received,
+the Lord of all Britain returned to his immediate kingdom.  His
+march is connected with many legendary stories.  In real history it
+is marked by the foundation of the castle of Durham, and by the
+Conqueror's confirmation of the privileges of the palatine bishops.
+If all the earls of England had been like the earls of Chester, and
+all the bishops like the bishops of Durham, England would assuredly
+have split up, like Germany, into a loose federation of temporal
+and spiritual princes.  This it was William's special work to
+hinder; but he doubtless saw that the exceptional privileges of one
+or two favoured lordships, standing in marked contrast to the rest,
+would not really interfere with his great plan of union.  And
+William would hardly have confirmed the sees of London or
+Winchester in the privileges which he allowed to the distant see of
+Durham.  He now also made a grant of earldoms, the object of which
+is less clear than that of most of his actions.  It is not easy to
+say why Gospatric was deprived of his earldom.  His former acts of
+hostility to William had been covered by his pardon and
+reappointment in 1069; and since then he had acted as a loyal, if
+perhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land.  Two greater earldoms
+than his had become vacant by the revolt, the death, the
+imprisonment, of Edwin and Morkere.  But these William had no
+intention of filling.  He would not have in his realm anything so
+dangerous as an earl of the Mercian's or the Northumbrians in the
+old sense, whether English or Norman.  But the defence of the
+northern frontier needed an earl to rule Northumberland in the
+later sense, the land north of the Tyne.  And after the fate of
+Robert of Comines, William could not as yet put a Norman earl in so
+perilous a post.  But the Englishman whom he chose was open to the
+same charges as the deposed Gospatric.  For he was Waltheof the son
+of Siward, the hero of the storm of York in 1069.  Already Earl of
+Northampton and Huntingdon, he was at this time high in the King's
+personal favour, perhaps already the husband of the King's niece.
+One side of William's policy comes out here.  Union was sometimes
+helped by division.  There were men whom William loved to make
+great, but whom he had no mind to make dangerous.  He gave them
+vast estates, but estates for the most part scattered over
+different parts of the kingdom.  It was only in the border earldoms
+and in Cornwall that he allowed anything at all near to the
+lordship of a whole shire to be put in the hands of a single man.
+One Norman and one Englishman held two earldoms together; but they
+were earldoms far apart.  Roger of Montgomery held the earldoms of
+Shrewsbury and Sussex, and Waltheof to his midland earldom of
+Northampton and Huntingdon now added the rule of distant
+Northumberland.  The men who had fought most stoutly against
+William were the men whom he most willingly received to favour.
+Eadric and Hereward were honoured; Waltheof was honoured more
+highly.  He ranked along with the greatest Normans; his position
+was perhaps higher than any but the King's born kinsmen.  But the
+whole tale of Waltheof is a problem that touches the character of
+the king under whom he rose and fell.  Lifted up higher than any
+other man among the conquered, he was the one man whom William put
+to death on a political charge.  It is hard to see the reasons for
+either his rise or his fall.  It was doubtless mainly his end which
+won him the abiding reverence of his countrymen.  His valour and
+his piety are loudly praised.  But his valour we know only from his
+one personal exploit at York; his piety was consistent with a base
+murder.  In other matters, he seems amiable, irresolute, and of a
+scrupulous conscience, and Northumbrian morality perhaps saw no
+great crime in a murder committed under the traditions of a
+Northumbrian deadly feud.  Long before Waltheof was born, his
+grandfather Earl Ealdred had been killed by a certain Carl.  The
+sons of Carl had fought by his side at York; but, notwithstanding
+this comradeship, the first act of Waltheof's rule in
+Northumberland was to send men to slay them beyond the bounds of
+his earldom.  A crime that was perhaps admired in Northumberland
+and unheard of elsewhere did not lose him either the favour of the
+King or the friendship of his neighbour Bishop Walcher, a reforming
+prelate with whom Waltheof acted in concert.  And when he was
+chosen as the single exception to William's merciful rule, it was
+not for this undoubted crime, but on charges of which, even if
+guilty, he might well have been forgiven.
+
+
+The sojourn of William on the continent in 1072 carries us out of
+England and Normandy into the general affairs of Europe.  Signs may
+have already showed themselves of what was coming to the south of
+Normandy; but the interest of the moment lay in the country of
+Matilda.  Flanders, long the firm ally of Normandy, was now to
+change into a bitter enemy.  Count Baldwin died in 1067; his
+successor of the same name died three years later, and a war
+followed between his widow Richildis, the guardian of his young son
+Arnulf, and his brother Robert the Frisian.  Robert had won fame in
+the East; he had received the sovereignty of Friesland--a name
+which takes in Holland and Zealand--and he was now invited to
+deliver Flanders from the oppressions of Richildis.  Meanwhile,
+Matilda was acting as regent of Normandy, with Earl William of
+Hereford as her counsellor.  Richildis sought help of her son's two
+overlords, King Henry of Germany and King Philip of France.  Philip
+came in person; the German succours were too late.  From Normandy
+came Earl William with a small party of knights.  The kings had
+been asked for armies; to the Earl she offered herself, and he came
+to fight for his bride.  But early in 1071 Philip, Arnulf, and
+William, were all overthrown by Robert the Frisian in the battle of
+Cassel.  Arnulf and Earl William were killed; Philip made peace
+with Robert, henceforth undisputed Count of Flanders.
+
+All this brought King William to the continent, while the invasion
+of Malcolm was still unavenged.  No open war followed between
+Normandy and Flanders; but for the rest of their lives Robert and
+William were enemies, and each helped the enemies of the other.
+William gave his support to Baldwin brother of the slain Arnulf,
+who strove to win Flanders from Robert.  But the real interest of
+this episode lies in the impression which was made in the lands
+east of Flanders.  In the troubled state of Germany, when Henry the
+Fourth was striving with the Saxons, both sides seem to have looked
+to the Conqueror of England with hope and with fear.  On this
+matter our English and Norman authorities are silent, and the
+notices in the contemporary German writers are strangely unlike one
+another.  But they show at least that the prince who ruled on both
+sides of the sea was largely in men's thoughts.  The Saxon enemy of
+Henry describes him in his despair as seeking help in Denmark,
+France, Aquitaine, and also of the King of the English, promising
+him the like help, if he should ever need it.  William and Henry
+had both to guard against Saxon enmity, but the throne at
+Winchester stood firmer than the throne at Goslar.  But the
+historian of the continental Saxons puts into William's mouth an
+answer utterly unsuited to his position.  He is made, when in
+Normandy, to answer that, having won his kingdom by force, he fears
+to leave it, lest he might not find his way back again.  Far more
+striking is the story told three years later by Lambert of
+Herzfeld.  Henry, when engaged in an Hungarian war, heard that the
+famous Archbishop Hanno of Koln had leagued with William Bostar--so
+is his earliest surname written--King of the English, and that a
+vast army was coming to set the island monarch on the German
+throne.  The host never came; but Henry hastened back to guard his
+frontier against BARBARIANS.  By that phrase a Teutonic writer can
+hardly mean the insular part of William's subjects.
+
+Now assuredly William never cherished, as his successor probably
+did, so wild a dream as that of a kingly crowning at Aachen, to be
+followed perhaps by an imperial crowning at Rome.  But that such
+schemes were looked on as a practical danger against which the
+actual German King had to guard, at least shows the place which the
+Conqueror of England held in European imagination.
+
+For the three or four years immediately following the surrender of
+Ely, William's journeys to and fro between his kingdom and his
+duchy were specially frequent.  Matilda seems to have always stayed
+in Normandy; she is never mentioned in England after the year of
+her coronation and the birth of her youngest son, and she commonly
+acted as regent of the duchy.  In the course of 1072 we see William
+in England, in Normandy, again in England, and in Scotland.  In
+1073 he was called beyond sea by a formidable movement.  His great
+continental conquest had risen against him; Le Mans and all Maine
+were again independent.  City and land chose for them a prince who
+came by female descent from the stock of their ancient counts.
+This was Hugh the son of Azo Marquess of Liguria and of Gersendis
+the sister of the last Count Herbert.  The Normans were driven out
+of Le Mans; Azo came to take possession in the name of his son, but
+he and the citizens did not long agree.  He went back, leaving his
+wife and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne.
+Presently the men of Le Mans threw off princely rule altogether and
+proclaimed the earliest commune in Northern Gaul.  Here then, as at
+Exeter, William had to strive against an armed commonwealth, and,
+as at Exeter, we specially wish to know what were to be the
+relations between the capital and the county at large.  The mass of
+the people throughout Maine threw themselves zealously into the
+cause of the commonwealth.  But their zeal might not have lasted
+long, if, according to the usual run of things in such cases, they
+had simply exchanged the lordship of their hereditary masters for
+the corporate lordship of the citizens of Le Mans.  To the nobles
+the change was naturally distasteful.  They had to swear to the
+commune, but many of them, Geoffrey for one, had no thought of
+keeping their oaths.  Dissensions arose; Hugh went back to Italy;
+Geoffrey occupied the castle of Le Mans, and the citizens dislodged
+him only by the dangerous help of the other prince who claimed the
+overlordship of Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou.
+
+If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjou
+hardly promised better than the lord of Normandy.  But men in
+despair grasp at anything.  The strange thing is that Fulk
+disappears now from the story; William steps in instead.  And it
+was at least as much in his English as in his Norman character that
+the Duke and King won back the revolted land.  A place in his army
+was held by English warriors, seemingly under the command of
+Hereward himself.  Men who had fought for freedom in their own land
+now fought at the bidding of their Conqueror to put down freedom in
+another land.  They went willingly; the English Chronicler
+describes the campaign with glee, and breaks into verse--or
+incorporates a contemporary ballad--at the tale of English victory.
+Few men of that day would see that the cause of Maine was in truth
+the cause of England.  If York and Exeter could not act in concert
+with one another, still less could either act in concert with Le
+Mans.  Englishmen serving in Maine would fancy that they were
+avenging their own wrongs by laying waste the lands of any man who
+spoke the French tongue.  On William's part, the employment of
+Englishmen, the employment of Hereward, was another stroke of
+policy.  It was more fully following out the system which led
+Englishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his comrades into
+Scotland.  For in every English soldier whom William carried into
+Maine he won a loyal English subject.  To men who had fought under
+his banners beyond the sea he would be no longer the Conqueror but
+the victorious captain; they would need some very special
+oppression at home to make them revolt against the chief whose
+laurels they had helped to win.  As our own gleeman tells the tale,
+they did little beyond harrying the helpless land; but in
+continental writers we can trace a regular campaign, in which we
+hear of no battles, but of many sieges.  William, as before,
+subdued the land piecemeal, keeping the city for the last.  When he
+drew near to Le Mans, its defenders surrendered at his summons, to
+escape fire and slaughter by speedy submission.  The new commune
+was abolished, but the Conqueror swore to observe all the ancient
+rights of the city.
+
+All this time we have heard nothing of Count Fulk.  Presently we
+find him warring against nobles of Maine who had taken William's
+part, and leaguing with the Bretons against William himself.  The
+King set forth with his whole force, Norman and English; but peace
+was made by the mediation of an unnamed Roman cardinal, abetted, we
+are told, by the chief Norman nobles.  Success against confederated
+Anjou and Britanny might be doubtful, with Maine and England
+wavering in their allegiance, and France, Scotland, and Flanders,
+possible enemies in the distance.  The rights of the Count of Anjou
+over Maine were formally acknowledged, and William's eldest son
+Robert did homage to Fulk for the county.  Each prince stipulated
+for the safety and favour of all subjects of the other who had
+taken his side.  Between Normandy and Anjou there was peace during
+the rest of the days of William; in Maine we shall see yet another
+revolt, though only a partial one.
+
+William went back to England in 1073.  In 1074 he went to the
+continent for a longer absence.  As the time just after the first
+completion of the Conquest is spoken of as a time when Normans and
+English were beginning to sit down side by side in peace, so the
+years which followed the submission of Ely are spoken of as a time
+of special oppression.  This fact is not unconnected with the
+King's frequent absences from England.  Whatever we say of
+William's own position, he was a check on smaller oppressors.
+Things were always worse when the eye of the great master was no
+longer watching.  William's one weakness was that of putting
+overmuch trust in his immediate kinsfolk and friends.  Of the two
+special oppressors, William Fitz-Osbern had thrown away his life in
+Flanders; but Bishop Ode was still at work, till several years
+later his king and brother struck him down with a truly righteous
+blow.
+
+The year 1074, not a year of fighting, was pro-eminently a year of
+intrigue.  William's enemies on the continent strove to turn the
+representative of the West-Saxon kings to help their ends.  Edgar
+flits to and fro between Scotland and Flanders, and the King of the
+French tempts him with the offer of a convenient settlement on the
+march of France, Normandy, and Flanders.  Edgar sets forth from
+Scotland, but is driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret then
+change their minds, and bid him make his peace with King William.
+William gladly accepts his submission; an embassy is sent to bring
+him with all worship to the King in Normandy.  He abides for
+several years in William's court contented and despised, receiving
+a daily pension and the profits of estates in England of no great
+extent which the King of a moment held by the grant of a rival who
+could afford to be magnanimous.
+
+
+Edgar's after-life showed that he belonged to that class of men
+who, as a rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act with
+energy, and who act most creditably on behalf of others.  But
+William had no need to fear him, and he was easily turned into a
+friend and a dependant.  Edgar, first of Englishmen by descent, was
+hardly an Englishman by birth.  William had now to deal with the
+Englishman who stood next to Edgar in dignity and far above him in
+personal estimation.  We have reached the great turning-point in
+William's reign and character, the black and mysterious tale of the
+fate of Waltheof.  The Earl of Northumberland, Northampton, and
+Huntingdon, was not the only earl in England of English birth.  The
+earldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who was
+more hateful than any stranger.  Ralph of Wader was the one
+Englishman who had fought at William's side against England.  He
+often passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held lands
+and castles in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother's
+side.  For Domesday and the Chronicles show that he was the son of
+an elder Earl Ralph, who had been staller or master of the horse in
+Edward's days, and who is expressly said to have been born in
+Norfolk.  The unusual name suggests that the elder Ralph was not of
+English descent.  He survived the coming of William, and his son
+fought on Senlac among the countrymen of his mother.  This treason
+implies an unrecorded banishment in the days of Edward or Harold.
+Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted vigorously for
+William against the Danes.  But he now conspired against him along
+with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who had
+succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman
+estates had passed to his elder brother William.  What grounds of
+complaint either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not;
+but that the loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtful
+throughout the year 1074 appears from several letters of rebuke and
+counsel sent to him by the Regent Lanfranc.  At last the wielder of
+both swords took to his spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earl
+excommunicate, till he should submit to the King's mercy and make
+restitution to the King and to all men whom he had wronged.  Roger
+remained stiff-necked under the Primate's censure, and presently
+committed an act of direct disobedience.  The next year, 1075, he
+gave his sister Emma in marriage to Earl Ralph.  This marriage the
+King had forbidden, on some unrecorded ground of state policy.
+Most likely he already suspected both earls, and thought any tie
+between them dangerous.  The notice shows William stepping in to
+do, as an act of policy, what under his successors became a matter
+of course, done with the sole object of making money.  The bride-
+ale--the name that lurks in the modern shape of bridal--was held at
+Exning in Cambridgeshire; bishops and abbots were guests of the
+excommunicated Roger; Waltheof was there, and many Breton comrades
+of Ralph.  In their cups they began to plot how they might drive
+the King out of the kingdom.  Charges, both true and false, were
+brought against William; in a mixed gathering of Normans, English,
+and Bretons, almost every act of William's life might pass as a
+wrong done to some part of the company, even though some others of
+the company were his accomplices.  Above all, the two earls Ralph
+and Roger made a distinct proposal to their fellow-earl Waltheof.
+King William should be driven out of the land; one of the three
+should be King; the other two should remain earls, ruling each over
+a third of the kingdom.  Such a scheme might attract earls, but no
+one else; it would undo William's best and greatest work; it would
+throw back the growing unity of the kingdom by all the steps that
+it had taken during several generations.
+
+Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes?
+Weighing the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the
+bride-ale, he consented to the treason, but that he thought better
+of it the next morning.  He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and
+ghostly father, and confessed to him whatever he had to confess.
+The Primate assigned his penitent some ecclesiastical penances; the
+Regent bade the Earl go into Normandy and tell the whole tale to
+the King.  Waltheof went, with gifts in hand; he told his story and
+craved forgiveness.  William made light of the matter, and kept
+Waltheof with him, but seemingly not under restraint, till he came
+back to England.
+
+Meanwhile the other two earls were in open rebellion.  Ralph, half
+Breton by birth and earl of a Danish land, asked help in Britanny
+and Denmark.  Bretons from Britanny and Bretons settled in England
+flocked to him.  King Swegen, now almost at the end of his reign
+and life, listened to the call of the rebels, and sent a fleet
+under the command of his son Cnut, the future saint, together with
+an earl named Hakon.  The revolt in England was soon put down, both
+in East and West.  The rebel earls met with no support save from
+those who were under their immediate influence.  The country acted
+zealously for the King.  Lanfranc could report that Earl Ralph and
+his army were fleeing, and that the King's men, French and English,
+were chasing them.  In another letter he could add, with some
+strength of language, that the kingdom was cleansed from the filth
+of the Bretons.  At Norwich only the castle was valiantly defended
+by the newly married Countess Emma.  Roger was taken prisoner;
+Ralph fled to Britanny; their followers were punished with various
+mutilations, save the defenders of Norwich, who were admitted to
+terms.  The Countess joined her husband in Britanny, and in days to
+come Ralph did something to redeem so many treasons by dying as an
+armed pilgrim in the first crusade.
+
+The main point of this story is that the revolt met with no English
+support whatever.  Not only did Bishop Wulfstan march along with
+his fierce Norman brethren Ode and Geoffrey; the English people
+everywhere were against the rebels.  For this revolt offered no
+attraction to English feeling; had the undertaking been less
+hopeless, nothing could have been gained by exchanging the rule of
+William for that of Ralph or Roger.  It might have been different
+if the Danes had played their part better.  The rebellion broke out
+while William was in Normandy; it was the sailing of the Danish
+fleet which brought him back to England.  But never did enterprise
+bring less honour on its leaders than this last Danish voyage up
+the Humber.  All that the holy Cnut did was to plunder the minster
+of Saint Peter at York and to sail away.
+
+His coming however seems to have altogether changed the King's
+feelings with regard to Waltheof.  As yet he had not been dealt
+with as a prisoner or an enemy.  He now came back to England with
+the King, and William's first act was to imprison both Waltheof and
+Roger.  The imprisonment of Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was a
+matter of course.  As for Waltheof, whatever he had promised at the
+bride-ale, he had done no disloyal act; he had had no share in the
+rebellion, and he had told the King all that he knew.  But he had
+listened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to leave him at
+large when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, was
+actually afloat.  Still what followed is strange indeed, specially
+strange with William as its chief doer.
+
+At the Midwinter Gemot of 1075-1076 Roger and Waltheof were brought
+to trial.  Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace of
+Boulogne.  Roger was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment for
+life.  Waltheof made his defence; his sentence was deferred; he was
+kept at Winchester in a straiter imprisonment than before.  At the
+Pentecostal Gemot of 1076, held at Westminster, his case was again
+argued, and he was sentenced to death.  On the last day of May the
+last English earl was beheaded on the hills above Winchester.
+
+Such a sentence and execution, strange at any time, is specially
+strange under William.  Whatever Waltheof had done, his offence was
+lighter than that of Roger; yet Waltheof has the heavier and Roger
+the lighter punishment.  With Scroggs or Jeffreys on the bench, it
+might have been argued that Waltheof's confession to the King did
+not, in strictness of law, wipe out the guilt of his original
+promise to the conspirators; but William the Great did not commonly
+act after the fashion of Scroggs and Jeffreys.  To deprive Waltheof
+of his earldom might doubtless be prudent; a man who had even
+listened to traitors might be deemed unfit for such a trust.  It
+might be wise to keep him safe under the King's eye, like Edwin,
+Morkere, and Edgar.  But why should he be picked out for death,
+when the far more guilty Roger was allowed to live?  Why should he
+be chosen as the one victim of a prince who never before or after,
+in Normandy or in England, doomed any man to die on a political
+charge?  These are questions hard to answer.  It is not enough to
+say that Waltheof was an Englishman, that it was William's policy
+gradually to get rid of Englishmen in high places, and that the
+time was now come to get rid of the last.  For such a policy
+forfeiture, or at most imprisonment, would have been enough.  While
+other Englishmen lost lands, honours, at most liberty, Waltheof
+alone lost his life by a judicial sentence.  It is likely enough
+that many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the one
+Englishman who still held the highest rank in England.  Still
+forfeiture without death might have satisfied even them.  But
+Waltheof was not only earl of three shires; he was husband of the
+King's near kinswoman.  We are told that Judith was the enemy and
+accuser of her husband.  This may have touched William's one weak
+point.  Yet he would hardly have swerved from the practice of his
+whole life to please the bloody caprice of a niece who longed for
+the death of her husband.  And if Judith longed for Waltheof's
+death, it was not from a wish to supply his place with another.
+Legend says that she refused a second husband offered her by the
+King; it is certain that she remained a widow.
+
+Waltheof's death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed of
+blood unlike anything else in William's life.  It seems to have
+been impolitic; it led to no revolt, but it called forth a new
+burst of English feeling.  Waltheof was deemed the martyr of his
+people; he received the same popular canonization as more than one
+English patriot.  Signs and wonders were wrought at his tomb at
+Crowland, till displays of miraculous power which were so
+inconsistent with loyalty and good order were straitly forbidden.
+The act itself marks a stage in the downward course of William's
+character.  In itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the very
+invasion of England, with all the bloodshed that they caused, might
+be deemed blacker crimes than the unjust death of a single man.
+But as human nature stands, the less crime needs a worse man to do
+it.  Crime, as ever, led to further crime and was itself the
+punishment of crime.  In the eyes of William's contemporaries the
+death of Waltheof, the blackest act of William's life, was also its
+turning-point.  From the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles' hill
+the magic of William's name and William's arms passed away.
+Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after Waltheof's death he
+never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or took a town.
+In this change of William's fortunes the men of his own day saw the
+judgement of God upon his crime.  And in the fact at least they
+were undoubtedly right.  Henceforth, though William's real power
+abides unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty
+defeats.  The last eleven years of his life would never have won
+him the name of Conqueror.  But in the higher walk of policy and
+legislation never was his nobler surname more truly deserved.
+Never did William the Great show himself so truly great as in these
+later years.
+
+
+The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggest
+another act of William's which cannot have been far from it in
+point of time, and about which men spoke in his own day in the same
+spirit.  If the judgement of God came on William for the beheading
+of Waltheof, it came on him also for the making of the New Forest.
+As to that forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration and
+a good deal of modern misconception.  The word forest is often
+misunderstood.  In its older meaning, a meaning which it still
+keeps in some parts, a forest has nothing to do with trees.  It is
+a tract of land put outside the common law and subject to a
+stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably always, to
+secure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of hunting.
+Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which it
+made on men's minds at the time is shown by its having kept the
+name of the New Forest for eight hundred years.  There is no reason
+to think that William laid waste any large tract of specially
+fruitful country, least of all that he laid waste a land thickly
+inhabited; for most of the Forest land never can have been such.
+But it is certain from Domesday and the Chronicle that William did
+afforest a considerable tract of land in Hampshire; he set it apart
+for the purposes of hunting; he fenced it in by special and cruel
+laws--stopping indeed short of death--for the protection of his
+pleasures, and in this process some men lost their lands, and were
+driven from their homes.  Some destruction of houses is here
+implied; some destruction of churches is not unlikely.  The popular
+belief, which hardly differs from the account of writers one degree
+later than Domesday and the Chronicle, simply exaggerates the
+extent of destruction.  There was no such wide-spread laying waste
+as is often supposed, because no such wide-spread laying waste was
+needed.  But whatever was needed for William's purpose was done;
+and Domesday gives us the record.  And the act surely makes, like
+the death of Waltheof, a downward stage in William's character.
+The harrying of Northumberland was in itself a far greater crime,
+and involved far more of human wretchedness.  But it is not
+remembered in the same way, because it has left no such abiding
+memorial.  But here again the lesser crime needed a worse man to do
+it.  The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done with a
+political object; it was the extreme form of military severity; it
+was not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to secure
+the fuller enjoyment of a brutal sport.  To this level William had
+now sunk.  It was in truth now that hunting in England finally took
+the character of a mere sport.  Hunting was no new thing; in an
+early state of society it is often a necessary thing.  The hunting
+of Alfred is spoken of as a grave matter of business, as part of
+his kingly duty.  He had to make war on the wild beasts, as he had
+to make war on the Danes.  The hunting of William is simply a
+sport, not his duty or his business, but merely his pleasure.  And
+to this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and slaughter, he
+did not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and to guard
+his enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age men
+shuddered.
+
+For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange
+and frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on
+the scene of his crime.  One of these himself he saw, the death of
+his second son Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged
+life might have saved England from the rule of William Rufus.  He
+died in the Forest, about the year 1081, to the deep grief of his
+parents.  And Domesday contains a touching entry, how William gave
+back his land to a despoiled Englishman as an offering for
+Richard's soul.
+
+
+The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their
+honours and estates into the King's hands.  Another fresh source of
+wealth came by the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal
+rank and her great estates, and who died while the proceedings
+against Waltheof were going on.  It was not now so important for
+William as it had been in the first years of the Conquest to reward
+his followers; he could now think of the royal hoard in the first
+place.  Of the estates which now fell in to the Crown large parts
+were granted out.  The house of Bigod, afterwards so renowned as
+Earls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather's share in the
+forfeited lands of Earl Ralph.  But William kept the greater part
+to himself; one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the
+Lady, he gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome.  Of the three
+earldoms, those of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the
+later earldoms of those lands have no connexion with the earls of
+William's day.  Waltheof's southern earldoms of Northampton and
+Huntingdon became the dowry of his daughter Matilda; that of
+Huntingdon passed to his descendants the Kings of Scots.  But
+Northumberland, close on the Scottish border, still needed an earl;
+but there is something strange in the choice of Bishop Walcher of
+Durham.  It is possible that this appointment was a concession to
+English feeling stirred to wrath at the death of Waltheof.  The
+days of English earls were over, and a Norman would have been
+looked on as Waltheof's murderer.  The Lotharingian bishop was a
+stranger; but he was not a Norman, and he was no oppressor of
+Englishmen.  But he was strangely unfit for the place.  Not a
+fighting bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he was chiefly devoted to
+spiritual affairs, specially to the revival of the monastic life,
+which had died out in Northern England since the Danish invasions.
+But his weak trust in unworthy favourites, English and foreign, led
+him to a fearful and memorable end.  The Bishop was on terms of
+close friendship with Ligulf, an Englishman of the highest birth
+and uncle by marriage to Earl Waltheof.  He had kept his estates;
+but the insolence of his Norman neighbours had caused him to come
+and live in the city of Durham near his friend the Bishop.  His
+favour with Walcher roused the envy of some of the Bishop's
+favourites, who presently contrived his death.  The Bishop
+lamented, and rebuked them; but he failed to "do justice," to
+punish the offenders sternly and speedily.  He was therefore
+believed to be himself guilty of Ligulf's death.  One of the most
+striking and instructive events of the time followed.  On May 14,
+1080, a full Gemot of the earldom was held at Gateshead to deal
+with the murder of Ligulf.  This was one of those rare occasions
+when a strong feeling led every man to the assembly.  The local
+Parliament took its ancient shape of an armed crowd, headed by the
+noblest Englishmen left in the earldom.  There was no vote, no
+debate; the shout was "Short rede good rede, slay ye the Bishop."
+And to that cry, Walcher himself and his companions, the murderers
+of Ligulf among them, were slaughtered by the raging multitude who
+had gathered to avenge him.
+
+The riot in which Walcher died was no real revolt against William's
+government.  Such a local rising against a local wrong might have
+happened in the like case under Edward or Harold.  No government
+could leave such a deed unpunished; but William's own ideas of
+justice would have been fully satisfied by the blinding or
+mutilation of a few ringleaders.  But William was in Normandy in
+the midst of domestic and political cares.  He sent his brother Ode
+to restore order, and his vengeance was frightful.  The land was
+harried; innocent men were mutilated and put to death; others saved
+their lives by bribes.  Earl after earl was set over a land so hard
+to rule.  A certain Alberie was appointed, but he was removed as
+unfit.  The fierce Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances tried his hand and
+resigned.  At the time of William's death the earldom was held by
+Geoffrey's nephew Robert of Mowbray, a stern and gloomy stranger,
+but whom Englishmen reckoned among "good men," when he guarded the
+marches of England against the Scot.
+
+
+After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed in
+Normandy for several years.  His ill luck now began.  Before the
+year 1076 was out, he entered, we know not why, on a Breton
+campaign.  But he was driven from Dol by the combined forces of
+Britanny and France; Philip was ready to help any enemy of William.
+The Conqueror had now for the first time suffered defeat in his own
+person.  He made peace with both enemies, promising his daughter
+Constance to Alan of Britanny.  But the marriage did not follow
+till ten years later.  The peace with France, as the English
+Chronicle says, "held little while;" Philip could not resist the
+temptation of helping William's eldest son Robert when the reckless
+young man rebelled against his father.  With most of the qualities
+of an accomplished knight, Robert had few of those which make
+either a wise ruler or an honest man.  A brave soldier, even a
+skilful captain, he was no general; ready of speech and free of
+hand, he was lavish rather than bountiful.  He did not lack
+generous and noble feelings; but of a steady course, even in evil,
+he was incapable.  As a ruler, he was no oppressor in his own
+person; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity to
+say No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than the
+oppression of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others.
+William would not set such an one over any part of his dominions
+before his time, and it was his policy to keep his children
+dependent on him.  While he enriched his brothers, he did not give
+the smallest scrap of the spoils of England to his sons.  But
+Robert deemed that he had a right to something greater than private
+estates.  The nobles of Normandy had done homage to him as
+William's successor; he had done homage to Fulk for Maine, as if he
+were himself its count.  He was now stirred up by evil companions
+to demand that, if his father would not give him part of his
+kingdom--the spirit of Edwin and Morkere had crossed the sea--he
+would at least give him Normandy and Maine.  William refused with
+many pithy sayings.  It was not his manner to take off his clothes
+till he went to bed.  Robert now, with a band of discontented young
+nobles, plunged into border warfare against his father.  He then
+wandered over a large part of Europe, begging and receiving money
+and squandering all that he got.  His mother too sent him money,
+which led to the first quarrel between William and Matilda after so
+many years of faithful union.  William rebuked his wife for helping
+his enemy in breach of his orders:  she pleaded the mother's love
+for her first-born.  The mother was forgiven, but her messenger,
+sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery.
+
+At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in the
+border-fortress of Gerberoi.  The strife between father and son
+became dangerous.  William besieged the castle, to undergo before
+its walls his second defeat, to receive his first wound, and that
+at the hands of his own son.  Pierced in the hand by the lance of
+Robert, his horse smitten by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to the
+ground, and was saved only by an Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggod
+of Wallingford, who gave his life for his king.  It seems an early
+softening of the tale which says that Robert dismounted and craved
+his father's pardon; it seems a later hardening which says that
+William pronounced a curse on his son.  William Rufus too, known as
+yet only as the dutiful son of his father, was wounded in his
+defence.  The blow was not only grievous to William's feelings as a
+father; it was a serious military defeat.  The two wounded Williams
+and the rest of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siege
+of Gerberoi was raised.
+
+We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peace
+between father and son.  In the course of the year 1080 a peace was
+patched up, and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert's
+energies in an expedition into Scotland.  In the autumn of the year
+of Gerberoi Malcolm had made another wasting inroad into
+Northumberland.  With the King absent and Northumberland in
+confusion through the death of Walcher, this wrong went unavenged
+till the autumn of 1080.  Robert gained no special glory in
+Scotland; a second quarrel with his father followed, and Robert
+remained a banished man during the last seven years of William's
+reign.
+
+In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the
+Truce of God again renewed which we heard of years ago.  The forms
+of outrage on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which
+the strong hand of William had put down more thoroughly than the
+Truce would do, had clearly begun again during the confusions
+caused by the rebellion of Robert.
+
+The two next years, 1081-1082, William was in England.  His home
+sorrows were now pressing heavily on him.  His eldest son was a
+rebel and an exile; about this time his second son died in the New
+Forest; according to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of
+Edwin, who had never forgotten her English lover, was now promised
+to the Spanish King Alfonso, and died--in answer to her own
+prayers--before the marriage was celebrated.  And now the partner
+of William's life was taken from him four years after his one
+difference with her.  On November 3, 1083, Matilda died after a
+long sickness, to her husband's lasting grief.  She was buried in
+her own church at Caen, and churches in England received gifts from
+William on behalf of her soul.
+
+The mourner had soon again to play the warrior.  Nearly the whole
+of William's few remaining years were spent in a struggle which in
+earlier times he would surely have ended in a day.  Maine, city and
+county, did not call for a third conquest; but a single baron of
+Maine defied William's power, and a single castle of Maine held out
+against him for three years.  Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont and
+Fresnay, revolted on some slight quarrel.  The siege of his castle
+of Sainte-Susanne went on from the death of Matilda till the last
+year but one of William's reign.  The tale is full of picturesque
+detail; but William had little personal share in it.  The best
+captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain against this one
+donjon on its rock.  William at last made peace with the subject
+who was too strong for him.  Hubert came to England and received
+the King's pardon.  Practically the pardon was the other way.
+
+Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the
+Conqueror.  Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful
+in all.  One last success was indeed in store for him; but that was
+to be purchased with his own life.  As he turned away in defeat
+from this castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of
+domestic sorrow, he may have thought, as others thought for him,
+that the curse of Waltheof, the curse of the New Forest, was ever
+tracking his steps.  If so, his crimes were done in England, and
+their vengeance came in Normandy.  In England there was no further
+room for his mission as Conqueror; he had no longer foes to
+overcome.  He had an act of justice to do, and he did it.  He had
+his kingdom to guard, and he guarded it.  He had to take the great
+step which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had,
+perhaps without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture of
+his reign be painted for all time as no reign before or after has
+been painted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM--1081-1087
+
+
+
+Of two events of these last years of the Conqueror's reign, events
+of very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken.
+The Welsh expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on
+British ground, and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of
+England.  William now made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but
+he was constantly called over to England.  The Welsh campaign
+proves his presence in England in 1081; he was again in England in
+1082, but he went back to Normandy between the two visits.  The
+visit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more characteristic
+act of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it.  The cruelty and
+insolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much more than
+he deserved, had passed all bounds.  In avenging the death of
+Walcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself or
+allowed any other man to do.  And now, beguiled by a soothsayer who
+said that one of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed of
+succeeding to the throne of Gregory the Seventh.  He made all kinds
+of preparations to secure his succession, and he was at last about
+to set forth for Italy at the head of something like an army.  His
+schemes were by no means to the liking of his brother.  William
+came suddenly over from Normandy, and met Ode in the Isle of Wight.
+There the King got together as many as he could of the great men of
+the realm.  Before them he arraigned Ode for all his crimes.  He
+had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he had shown
+himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the realm.
+Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for the
+defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on his
+wild schemes in Italy.  How was he to deal with such a brother,
+William asked of his wise men.
+
+He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak.  William
+then gave his judgement.  The common enemy of the whole realm
+should not be spared because he was the King's brother.  He should
+be seized and put in ward.  As none dared to seize him, the King
+seized him with his own hands.  And now, for the first time in
+England, we hear words which were often heard again.  The bishop
+stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the privileges of his
+order.  He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge him but the
+Pope.  William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his answer
+ready.  "I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom I
+set over my kingdom."  So the Earl of Kent was carried off to a
+prison in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for
+the release of the Bishop of Bayeux.
+
+The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his
+island kingdom.  In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-
+bed of his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the
+Midwinter Gemot in England.  The chief object of the assembly was
+the specially distasteful one of laying on of a tax.  In the course
+of the next year, six shillings was levied on every hide of land to
+meet a pressing need.  The powers of the North were again
+threatening; the danger, if it was danger, was greater than when
+Waltheof smote the Normans in the gate at York.  Swegen and his
+successor Harold were dead.  Cnut the Saint reigned in Denmark, the
+son-in-law of Robert of Flanders.  This alliance with William's
+enemy joined with his remembrance of his own two failures to stir
+up the Danish king to a yearning for some exploit in England.
+English exiles were still found to urge him to the enterprise.
+William's conquest had scattered banished or discontented
+Englishmen over all Europe.  Many had made their way to the Eastern
+Rome; they had joined the Warangian guard, the surest support of
+the Imperial throne, and at Dyrrhachion, as on Senlac, the axe of
+England had met the lance of Normandy in battle.  Others had fled
+to the North; they prayed Cnut to avenge the death of his kinsman
+Harold and to deliver England from the yoke of men--so an English
+writer living in Denmark spoke of them--of Roman speech.  Thus the
+Greek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other, still kept on
+the name of Rome.  The fleet of Denmark was joined by the fleet of
+Flanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout and
+peaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a share
+in the work of war.
+
+Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of the
+tax that he had just levied.  He could hardly have dreamed of
+defending England against Danish invaders by English weapons only.
+But he thought as little of trusting the work to his own Normans.
+With the money of England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse and
+foot, from France and Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert was
+still defying him at Sainte-Susanne.  He gathered this force on the
+mainland, and came back at its head, a force such as England had
+never before seen; men wondered how the land might feed them all.
+The King's men, French and English, had to feed them, each man
+according to the amount of his land.  And now William did what
+Harold had refused to do; he laid waste the whole coast that lay
+open to attack from Denmark and Flanders.  But no Danes, no
+Flemings, came.  Disputes arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf,
+and the great enterprise came to nothing.  William kept part of his
+mercenaries in England, and part he sent to their homes.  Cnut was
+murdered in a church by his own subjects, and was canonized as
+Sanctus Canutus by a Pope who could not speak the Scandinavian
+name.
+
+Meanwhile, at the Midwinter Gemot of 1085-1086, held in due form at
+Gloucester, William did one of his greatest acts.  "The King had
+mickle thought and sooth deep speech with his Witan about his land,
+how it were set and with whilk men."  In that "deep speech," so
+called in our own tongue, lurks a name well known and dear to every
+Englishman.  The result of that famous parliament is set forth at
+length by the Chronicler.  The King sent his men into each shire,
+men who did indeed set down in their writ how the land was set and
+of what men.  In that writ we have a record in the Roman tongue no
+less precious than the Chronicles in our own.  For that writ became
+the Book of Winchester, the book to which our fathers gave the name
+of Domesday, the book of judgement that spared no man.
+
+The Great Survey was made in the course of the first seven months
+of the year 1086.  Commissioners were sent into every shire, who
+inquired by the oaths of the men of the hundreds by whom the land
+had been held in King Edward's days and what it was worth then, by
+whom it was held at the time of the survey and what it was worth
+then; and lastly, whether its worth could be raised.  Nothing was
+to be left out.  "So sooth narrowly did he let spear it out, that
+there was not a hide or a yard of land, nor further--it is shame to
+tell, and it thought him no shame to do--an ox nor a cow nor a
+swine was left that was not set in his writ."  This kind of
+searching inquiry, never liked at any time, would be specially
+grievous then.  The taking of the survey led to disturbances in
+many places, in which not a few lives were lost.  While the work
+was going on, William went to and fro till he knew thoroughly how
+this land was set and of what men.  He had now a list of all men,
+French and English, who held land in his kingdom.  And it was not
+enough to have their names in a writ; he would see them face to
+face.  On the making of the survey followed that great assembly,
+that great work of legislation, which was the crown of William's
+life as a ruler and lawgiver of England.  The usual assemblies of
+the year had been held at Winchester and Westminster.  An
+extraordinary assembly was held in the plain of Salisbury on the
+first day of August.  The work of that assembly has been already
+spoken of.  It was now that all the owners of land in the kingdom
+became the men of the King; it was now that England became one,
+with no fear of being again parted asunder.
+
+
+The close connexion between the Great Survey and the law and the
+oath of Salisbury is plain.  It was a great matter for the King to
+get in the gold certainly and, we may add, fairly.  William would
+deal with no man otherwise than according to law as he understood
+the law.  But he sought for more than this.  He would not only know
+what this land could be made to pay; he would know the state of his
+kingdom in every detail; he would know its military strength; he
+would know whether his own will, in the long process of taking from
+this man and giving to that, had been really carried out.  Domesday
+is before all things a record of the great confiscation, a record
+of that gradual change by which, in less than twenty years, the
+greater part of the land of England had been transferred from
+native to foreign owners.  And nothing shows like Domesday in what
+a formally legal fashion that transfer was carried out.  What were
+the principles on which it was carried out, we have already seen.
+All private property in land came only from the grant of King
+William.  It had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; he
+might keep it himself; he might give it back to its old owner or
+grant it to a new one.  So it was at the general redemption of
+lands; so it was whenever fresh conquests or fresh revolts threw
+fresh lands into the King's hands.  The principle is so thoroughly
+taken for granted, that we are a little startled to find it
+incidentally set forth in so many words in a case of no special
+importance.  A priest named Robert held a single yardland in alms
+of the King; he became a monk in the monastery of Stow-in-Lindesey,
+and his yardland became the property of the house.  One hardly sees
+why this case should have been picked out for a solemn declaration
+of the general law.  Yet, as "the day on which the English redeemed
+their lands" is spoken of only casually in the case of a particular
+estate, so the principle that no man could hold lands except by the
+King's grant ("Non licet terram alicui habere nisi regis concessu")
+is brought in only to illustrate the wrongful dealing of Robert and
+the monks of Stow in the case of a very small holding indeed.
+
+All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William's whole
+position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system of
+legal fictions.  Domesday is full of them; one might almost say
+that there is nothing else there.  A very attentive study of
+Domesday might bring out the fact that William was a foreign
+conqueror, and that the book itself was a record of the process by
+which he took the lands of the natives who had fought against him
+to reward the strangers who had fought for him.  But nothing of
+this kind appears on the surface of the record.  The great facts of
+the Conquest are put out of sight.  William is taken for granted,
+not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor of
+Edward.  The "time of King Edward" and the "time of King William"
+are the two times that the law knows of.  The compilers of the
+record are put to some curious shifts to describe the time between
+"the day when King Edward was alive and dead" and the day "when
+King William came into England."  That coming might have been as
+peaceful as the coming of James the First or George the First.  The
+two great battles are more than once referred to, but only casually
+in the mention of particular persons.  A very sharp critic might
+guess that one of them had something to do with King William's
+coming into England; but that is all.  Harold appears only as Earl;
+it is only in two or three places that we hear of a "time of
+Harold," and even of Harold "seizing the kingdom" and "reigning."
+These two or three places stand out in such contrast to the general
+language of the record that we are led to think that the scribe
+must have copied some earlier record or taken down the words of
+some witness, and must have forgotten to translate them into more
+loyal formulae.  So in recording who held the land in King Edward's
+day and who in King William's, there is nothing to show that in so
+many cases the holder under Edward had been turned out to make room
+for the holder under William.  The former holder is marked by the
+perfectly colourless word "ancestor" ("antecessor"), a word as yet
+meaning, not "forefather," but "predecessor" of any kind.  In
+Domesday the word is most commonly an euphemism for "dispossessed
+Englishman."  It is a still more distinct euphemism where the
+Norman holder is in more than one place called the "heir" of the
+dispossessed Englishmen.
+
+The formulae of Domesday are the most speaking witness to the
+spirit of outward legality which ruled every act of William.  In
+this way they are wonderfully instructive; but from the formulae
+alone no one could ever make the real facts of William's coming and
+reign.  It is the incidental notices which make us more at home in
+the local and personal life of this reign than of any reign before
+or for a long time after.  The Commissioners had to report whether
+the King's will had been everywhere carried out, whether every man,
+great and small, French and English, had what the King meant him to
+have, neither more nor less.  And they had often to report a state
+of things different from what the King had meant to be.  Many men
+had not all that King William had meant them to have, and many
+others had much more.  Normans had taken both from Englishmen and
+from other Normans.  Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some had
+taken from ecclesiastical bodies; some had taken from King William
+himself; nay King William himself holds lands which he ought to
+give up to another man.  This last entry at least shows that
+William was fully ready to do right, according to his notions of
+right.  So also the King's two brothers are set down among the
+chief offenders.  Of these unlawful holdings of land, marked in the
+technical language of the Survey as invasiones and occupationes,
+many were doubtless real cases of violent seizure, without excuse
+even according to William's reading of the law.  But this does not
+always follow, even when the language of the Survey would seem to
+imply it.  Words implying violence, per vim and the like, are used
+in the legal language of all ages, where no force has been used,
+merely to mark a possession as illegal.  We are startled at finding
+the Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders; but the words
+"sanctus Paulus invasit" mean no more than that the canons of Saint
+Paul's church in London held lands to which the Commissioners held
+that they had no good title.  It is these cases where one man held
+land which another claimed that gave opportunity for those personal
+details, stories, notices of tenures and customs, which make
+Domesday the most precious store of knowledge of the time.
+
+One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the way
+in which the lands in this or that district were commonly granted
+out.  The in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the lands
+which such and such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, held
+in that shire or district.  The grantee stepped exactly into the
+place of the antecessor; he inherited all his rights and all his
+burthens.  He inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent of
+the lands of the antecessor or as to the nature of his tenure.  And
+new disputes arose in the process of transfer.  One common source
+of dispute was when the former owner, besides lands which were
+strictly his own, held lands on lease, subject to a reversionary
+interest on the part of the Crown or the Church.  The lease or
+sale--emere is the usual word--of Church lands for three lives to
+return to the Church at the end of the third life was very common.
+If the antecessor was himself the third life, the grantee, his
+heir, had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take in
+only with all its existing liabilities.  But the grantee often took
+possession of the whole of the land held by the antecessor, as if
+it were all alike his own.  A crowd of complaints followed from all
+manner of injured persons and bodies, great and small, French and
+English, lay and clerical.  The Commissioners seem to have fairly
+heard all, and to have fairly reported all for the King to judge
+of.  It is their care to do right to all men which has given us
+such strange glimpses of the inner life of an age which had none
+like it before or after.
+
+The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem to
+mark William's work in England, his work as an English statesman,
+as done.  He could hardly have had time to redress the many cases
+of wrong which the Survey laid before him; but he was able to wring
+yet another tax out of the nation according to his new and more
+certain register.  He then, for the last time, crossed to Normandy
+with his new hoard.  The Chronicler and other writers of the time
+dwell on the physical portents of these two years, the storms, the
+fires, the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths of famous men on
+both sides of the sea.  Of the year 1087, the last year of the
+Conqueror, it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to set
+forth the signs and wonders.  The King had left England safe,
+peaceful, thoroughly bowed down under the yoke, cursing the ruler
+who taxed her and granted away her lands, yet half blessing him for
+the "good frith" that he made against the murderer, the robber, and
+the ravisher.  But the land that he had won was neither to see his
+end nor to shelter his dust.  One last gleam of success was, after
+so many reverses, to crown his arms; but it was success which was
+indeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered Exeter and Le Mans
+in peaceful triumph.  And the death-blow was now to come to him
+who, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the first
+time to cruel and petty havoc without an object.
+
+The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land
+of which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between
+kingdom and duchy.  Border wars had been common; just at this time
+the inroads of the French commanders at Mantes are said to have
+been specially destructive.  William not only demanded redress from
+the King, but called for the surrender of the whole Vexin.  What
+followed is a familiar story.  Philip makes a foolish jest on the
+bodily state of his great rival, unable just then to carry out his
+threats.  "The King of the English lies in at Rouen; there will be
+a great show of candles at his churching."  As at Alencon in his
+youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, was stung
+to the uttermost by personal mockery.  By the splendour of God,
+when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles at
+Philip's cost.  He kept his word at the cost of Philip's subjects.
+The ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered the
+fruits of autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the
+enemy.  But he did more than gather fruits; the candles of his
+churching were indeed lighted in the burning streets of Mantes.
+The picture of William the Great directing in person mere brutal
+havoc like this is strange even after the harrying of
+Northumberland and the making of the New Forest.  Riding to and fro
+among the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel,
+gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false step
+of his horse gave him his death-blow.  Carried to Rouen, to the
+priory of Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15
+to September 7, and then the reign and life of the Conqueror came
+to an end.  Forsaken by his children, his body stripped and well
+nigh forgotten, the loyalty of one honest knight, Herlwin of
+Conteville, bears his body to his grave in his own church at Caen.
+His very grave is disputed--a dispossessed antecessor claims the
+ground as his own, and the dead body of the Conqueror has to wait
+while its last resting-place is bought with money.  Into that
+resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the rites
+of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of his
+crowning.  With much striving he had at last won his seven feet of
+ground; but he was not to keep it for ever.  Religious warfare
+broke down his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured
+relic.  Civil revolution swept away the one remaining fragment.
+And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled
+tombs of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint
+Stephen's still tells us where the bones of William once lay but
+where they lie no longer.
+
+
+There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and
+burial of the Conqueror.  We shrink from giving the same trust to
+the long tale of penitence which is put into the mouth of the dying
+King.  He may, in that awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of the
+last one-and-twenty years of his life; he hardly threw his
+repentance into the shape of a detailed autobiographical
+confession.  But the more authentic sayings and doings of William's
+death-bed enable us to follow his course as an English statesman
+almost to his last moments.  His end was one of devotion, of
+prayers and almsgiving, and of opening of the prison to them that
+were bound.  All save one of his political prisoners, English and
+Norman, he willingly set free.  Morkere and his companions from
+Ely, Walfnoth son of Godwine, hostage for Harold's faith, Wulf son
+of Harold and Ealdgyth, taken, we can hardly doubt, as a babe when
+Chester opened its gates to William, were all set free; some indeed
+were put in bonds again by the King's successor.  But Ode William
+would not set free; he knew too well how many would suffer if he
+were again let loose upon the world.  But love of kindred was still
+strong; at last he yielded, sorely against his will, to the prayers
+and pledges of his other brother.  Ode went forth from his prison,
+again Bishop of Bayeux, soon again to be Earl of Kent, and soon to
+prove William's foresight by his deeds.
+
+William's disposal of his dominions on his death-bed carries on his
+political history almost to his last breath.  Robert, the banished
+rebel, might seem to have forfeited all claims to the succession.
+But the doctrine of hereditary right had strengthened during the
+sixty years of William's life.  He is made to say that, though he
+foresees the wretchedness of any land over which Robert should be
+the ruler, still he cannot keep him out of the duchy of Normandy
+which is his birthright.  Of England he will not dare to dispose;
+he leaves the decision to God, seemingly to Archbishop Lanfranc as
+the vicar of God.  He will only say that his wish is for his son
+William to succeed him in his kingdom, and he prays Lanfranc to
+crown him king, if he deem such a course to be right.  Such a
+message was a virtual nomination, and William the Red succeeded his
+father in England, but kept his crown only by the help of loyal
+Englishmen against Norman rebels.  William Rufus, it must be
+remembered, still under the tutelage of his father and Lanfranc,
+had not yet shown his bad qualities; he was known as yet only as
+the dutiful son who fought for his father against the rebel Robert.
+By ancient English law, that strong preference which was all that
+any man could claim of right belonged beyond doubt to the youngest
+of William's sons, the English AEtheling Henry.  He alone was born
+in the land; he alone was the son of a crowned King and his Lady.
+It is perhaps with a knowledge of what followed that William is
+made to bid his youngest son wait while his eldest go before him;
+that he left him landless, but master of a hoard of silver, there
+is no reason to doubt.  English feeling, which welcomed Henry
+thirteen years later, would doubtless have gladly seen his
+immediate accession; but it might have been hard, in dividing
+William's dominions, to have shut out the second son in favour of
+the third.  And in the scheme of events by which conquered England
+was to rise again, the reign of Rufus, at the moment the darkest
+time of all, had its appointed share.
+
+
+That England could rise again, that she could rise with a new life,
+strengthened by her momentary overthrow, was before all things
+owing to the lucky destiny which, if she was to be conquered, gave
+her William the Great as her Conqueror.  It is as it is in all
+human affairs.  William himself could not have done all that he
+did, wittingly and unwittingly, unless circumstances had been
+favourable to him; but favourable circumstances would have been
+useless, unless there had been a man like William to take advantage
+of them.  What he did, wittingly or unwittingly, he did by virtue
+of his special position, the position of a foreign conqueror
+veiling his conquest under a legal claim.  The hour and the man
+were alike needed.  The man in his own hour wrought a work, partly
+conscious, partly unconscious.  The more clearly any man
+understands his conscious work, the more sure is that conscious
+work to lead to further results of which he dreams not.  So it was
+with the Conqueror of England.  His purpose was to win and to keep
+the kingdom of England, and to hand it on to those who should come
+after him more firmly united than it had ever been before.  In this
+work his spirit of formal legality, his shrinking from needless
+change, stood him in good stead.  He saw that as the kingdom of
+England could best be won by putting forth a legal claim to it, so
+it could best be kept by putting on the character of a legal ruler,
+and reigning as the successor of the old kings seeking the unity of
+the kingdom; he saw, from the example both of England and of other
+lands, the dangers which threatened that unity; he saw what
+measures were needed to preserve it in his own day, measures which
+have preserved it ever since.  Here is a work, a conscious work,
+which entitles the foreign Conqueror to a place among English
+statesmen, and to a place in their highest rank.  Further than this
+we cannot conceive William himself to have looked.  All that was to
+come of his work in future ages was of necessity hidden from his
+eyes, no less than from the eyes of smaller men.  He had assuredly
+no formal purpose to make England Norman; but still less had he any
+thought that the final outcome of his work would make England on
+one side more truly English than if he had never crossed the sea.
+In his ecclesiastical work he saw the future still less clearly.
+He designed to reform what he deemed abuses, to bring the English
+Church into closer conformity with the other Churches of the West;
+he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform would be
+the strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of John.
+His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wield
+powers, that he could hold forces in check, which would be too
+strong for those who should come after him.  At his purposes with
+regard to the relations of England and Normandy it would be vain to
+guess.  The mere leaving of kingdom and duchy to different sons
+would not necessarily imply that he designed a complete or lasting
+separation.  But assuredly William did not foresee that England,
+dragged into wars with France as the ally of Normandy, would remain
+the lasting rival of France after Normandy had been swallowed up in
+the French kingdom.  If rivalry between England and France had not
+come in this way, it would doubtless have come in some other way;
+but this is the way in which it did come about.  As a result of the
+union of Normandy and England under one ruler, it was part of
+William's work, but a work of which William had no thought.  So it
+was with the increased connexion of every kind between England and
+the continent of Europe which followed on William's coming.  With
+one part of Europe indeed the connexion of England was lessened.
+For three centuries before William's coming, dealings in war and
+peace with the Scandinavian kingdoms had made up a large part of
+English history.  Since the baffled enterprise of the holy Cnut,
+our dealings with that part of Europe have been of only secondary
+account.
+
+But in our view of William as an English statesman, the main
+feature of all is that spirit of formal legality of which we have
+so often spoken.  Its direct effects, partly designed, partly
+undesigned, have affected our whole history to this day.  It was
+his policy to disguise the fact of conquest, to cause all the
+spoils of conquest to be held, in outward form, according to the
+ancient law of England.  The fiction became a fact, and the fact
+greatly helped in the process of fusion between Normans and
+English.  The conquering race could not keep itself distinct from
+the conquered, and the form which the fusion took was for the
+conquerors to be lost in the greater mass of the conquered.
+William founded no new state, no new nation, no new constitution;
+he simply kept what he found, with such modifications as his
+position made needful.  But without any formal change in the nature
+of English kingship, his position enabled him to clothe the crown
+with a practical power such as it had never held before, to make
+his rule, in short, a virtual despotism.  These two facts
+determined the later course of English history, and they determined
+it to the lasting good of the English nation.  The conservative
+instincts of William allowed our national life and our national
+institutions to live on unbroken through his conquest.  But it was
+before all things the despotism of William, his despotism under
+legal forms, which preserved our national institutions to all time.
+As a less discerning conqueror might have swept our ancient laws
+and liberties away, so under a series of native kings those laws
+and liberties might have died out, as they died out in so many
+continental lands.  But the despotism of the crown called forth the
+national spirit in a conscious and antagonistic shape; it called
+forth that spirit in men of both races alike, and made Normans and
+English one people.  The old institutions lived on, to be clothed
+with a fresh life, to be modified as changed circumstances might
+make needful.  The despotism of the Norman kings, the peculiar
+character of that despotism, enabled the great revolution of the
+thirteenth century to take the forms, which it took, at once
+conservative and progressive.  So it was when, more than four
+centuries after William's day, England again saw a despotism
+carried on under the forms of law.  Henry the Eighth reigned as
+William had reigned; he did not reign like his brother despots on
+the continent; the forms of law and freedom lived on.  In the
+seventeenth century therefore, as in the thirteenth, the forms
+stood ready to be again clothed with a new life, to supply the
+means for another revolution, again at once conservative and
+progressive.  It has been remarked a thousand times that, while
+other nations have been driven to destroy and to rebuild the
+political fabric, in England we have never had to destroy and to
+rebuild, but have found it enough to repair, to enlarge, and to
+improve.  This characteristic of English history is mainly owing to
+the events of the eleventh century, and owing above all to the
+personal agency of William.  As far as mortal man can guide the
+course of things when he is gone, the course of our national
+history since William's day has been the result of William's
+character and of William's acts.  Well may we restore to him the
+surname that men gave him in his own day.  He may worthily take his
+place as William the Great alongside of Alexander, Constantine, and
+Charles.  They may have wrought in some sort a greater work,
+because they had a wider stage to work it on.  But no man ever
+wrought a greater and more abiding work on the stage that fortune
+gave him than he
+
+
+"Qui dux Normannis, qui Caesar praefuit Anglis."
+
+
+Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place on the
+roll of English statesmen, and no man that came after him has won a
+right to a higher place.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR ***
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>William the Conqueror</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">William the Conqueror, by E. A. Freeman</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William the Conqueror, by E. A. Freeman
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+Title: William the Conqueror
+
+Author: E. A. Freeman
+
+Release Date: October, 1997  [EBook #1066]
+[This file was first posted on February 12, 1998]
+[Most recently updated: June 28, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>William the Conqueror</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Contents</p>
+<p>Introduction<br />The Early Years of William<br />William&rsquo;s
+First Visit to England<br />The Reign of William in Normandy<br />Harold&rsquo;s
+Oat to William<br />The Negotiations of Duke William<br />William&rsquo;s
+Invasion of England<br />The Conquest of England<br />The Settlement
+of England<br />The Revolts against William<br />The Last Years of William</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I&mdash;INTRODUCTION</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The history of England, like the land and its people, has been specially
+insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influences from without.&nbsp;
+No land has owed more than England to the personal action of men not
+of native birth.&nbsp; Britain was truly called another world, in opposition
+to the world of the European mainland, the world of Rome.&nbsp; In every
+age the history of Britain is the history of an island, of an island
+great enough to form a world of itself.&nbsp; In speaking of Celts or
+Teutons in Britain, we are speaking, not simply of Celts and Teutons,
+but of Celts and Teutons parted from their kinsfolk on the mainland,
+and brought under the common influences of an island world.&nbsp; The
+land has seen several settlements from outside, but the settlers have
+always been brought under the spell of their insular position.&nbsp;
+Whenever settlement has not meant displacement, the new comers have
+been assimilated by the existing people of the land.&nbsp; When it has
+meant displacement, they have still become islanders, marked off from
+those whom they left behind by characteristics which were the direct
+result of settlement in an island world.</p>
+<p>The history of Britain then, and specially the history of England,
+has been largely a history of elements absorbed and assimilated from
+without.&nbsp; But each of those elements has done somewhat to modify
+the mass into which it was absorbed.&nbsp; The English land and nation
+are not as they might have been if they had never in later times absorbed
+the Fleming, the French Huguenot, the German Palatine.&nbsp; Still less
+are they as they might have been, if they had not in earlier times absorbed
+the greater elements of the Dane and the Norman.&nbsp; Both were assimilated;
+but both modified the character and destiny of the people into whose
+substance they were absorbed.&nbsp; The conquerors from Normandy were
+silently and peacefully lost in the greater mass of the English people;
+still we can never be as if the Norman had never come among us.&nbsp;
+We ever bear about us the signs of his presence.&nbsp; Our colonists
+have carried those signs with them into distant lands, to remind men
+that settlers in America and Australia came from a land which the Norman
+once entered as a conqueror.&nbsp; But that those signs of his presence
+hold the place which they do hold in our mixed political being, that,
+badges of conquest as they are, no one feels them to be badges of conquest&mdash;all
+this comes of the fact that, if the Norman came as a conqueror, he came
+as a conqueror of a special, perhaps almost of an unique kind.&nbsp;
+The Norman Conquest of England has, in its nature and in its results,
+no exact parallel in history.&nbsp; And that it has no exact parallel
+in history is largely owing to the character and position of the man
+who wrought it.&nbsp; That the history of England for the last eight
+hundred years has been what it has been has largely come of the personal
+character of a single man.&nbsp; That we are what we are to this day
+largely comes of the fact that there was a moment when our national
+destiny might be said to hang on the will of a single man, and that
+that man was William, surnamed at different stages of his life and memory,
+the Bastard, the Conqueror, and the Great.</p>
+<p>With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William the Norman
+Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of English statesmen.&nbsp;
+That so it should be is characteristic of English history.&nbsp; Our
+history has been largely wrought for us by men who have come in from
+without, sometimes as conquerors, sometimes as the opposite of conquerors;
+but in whatever character they came, they had to put on the character
+of Englishmen, and to make their work an English work.&nbsp; From whatever
+land they came, on whatever mission they came, as statesmen they were
+English.&nbsp; William, the greatest of his class, is still but a member
+of a class.&nbsp; Along with him we must reckon a crowd of kings, bishops,
+and high officials in many ages of our history.&nbsp; Theodore of Tarsus
+and Cnut of Denmark, Lanfranc of Pavia and Anselm of Aosta, Randolf
+Flambard and Roger of Salisbury, Henry of Anjou and Simon of Montfort,
+are all written on a list of which William is but the foremost.&nbsp;
+The largest number come in William&rsquo;s own generation and in the
+generations just before and after it.&nbsp; But the breed of England&rsquo;s
+adopted children and rulers never died out.&nbsp; The name of William
+the Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his namesake the Conqueror,
+yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou.&nbsp; And we count
+among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung from other
+lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, as statesmen
+at least, must count as English.&nbsp; As we look along the whole line,
+even among the conquering kings and their immediate instruments, their
+work never takes the shape of the rooting up of the earlier institutions
+of the land.&nbsp; Those institutions are modified, sometimes silently
+by the mere growth of events, sometimes formally and of set purpose.&nbsp;
+Old institutions get new names; new institutions are set up alongside
+of them.&nbsp; But the old ones are never swept away; they sometimes
+die out; they are never abolished.&nbsp; This comes largely of the absorbing
+and assimilating power of the island world.&nbsp; But it comes no less
+of personal character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently
+of the personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances
+in which he found himself.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Our special business now is with the personal acts and character
+of William, and above all with his acts and character as an English
+statesman.&nbsp; But the English reign of William followed on his earlier
+Norman reign, and its character was largely the result of his earlier
+Norman reign.&nbsp; A man of the highest natural gifts, he had gone
+through such a schooling from his childhood upwards as falls to the
+lot of few princes.&nbsp; Before he undertook the conquest of England,
+he had in some sort to work the conquest of Normandy.&nbsp; Of the ordinary
+work of a sovereign in a warlike age, the defence of his own land, the
+annexation of other lands, William had his full share.&nbsp; With the
+land of his overlord he had dealings of the most opposite kinds.&nbsp;
+He had to call in the help of the French king to put down rebellion
+in the Norman duchy, and he had to drive back more than one invasion
+of the French king at the head of an united Norman people.&nbsp; He
+added Domfront and Maine to his dominions, and the conquest of Maine,
+the work as much of statesmanship as of warfare, was the rehearsal of
+the conquest of England.&nbsp; There, under circumstances strangely
+like those of England, he learned his trade as conqueror, he learned
+to practise on a narrower field the same arts which he afterwards practised
+on a wider.&nbsp; But after all, William&rsquo;s own duchy was his special
+school; it was his life in his own duchy which specially helped to make
+him what he was.&nbsp; Surrounded by trials and difficulties almost
+from his cradle, he early learned the art of enduring trials and overcoming
+difficulties; he learned how to deal with men; he learned when to smite
+and when to spare; and it is not a little to his honour that, in the
+long course of such a reign as his, he almost always showed himself
+far more ready to spare than to smite.</p>
+<p>Before then we can look at William as an English statesman, we must
+first look on him in the land in which he learned the art of statesmanship.&nbsp;
+We must see how one who started with all the disadvantages which are
+implied in his earlier surname of the Bastard came to win and to deserve
+his later surnames of the Conqueror and the Great.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II&mdash;THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM&mdash;A.D. 1028-1051</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>If William&rsquo;s early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling
+for his later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and his
+schooling began early.&nbsp; His nominal reign began at the age of seven
+years, and his personal influence on events began long before he had
+reached the usual years of discretion.&nbsp; And the events of his minority
+might well harden him, while they could not corrupt him in the way in
+which so many princes have been corrupted.&nbsp; His whole position,
+political and personal, could not fail to have its effect in forming
+the man.&nbsp; He was Duke of the Normans, sixth in succession from
+Rolf, the founder of the Norman state.&nbsp; At the time of his accession,
+rather more than a hundred and ten years had passed since plunderers,
+occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia, had changed into acknowledged
+members of the Western or Karolingian kingdom.&nbsp; The Northmen, changed,
+name and thing, into <i>Normans</i>, were now in all things members
+of the Christian and French-speaking world.&nbsp; But French as the
+Normans of William&rsquo;s day had become, their relation to the kings
+and people of France was not a friendly one.&nbsp; At the time of the
+settlement of Rolf, the western kingdom of the Franks had not yet finally
+passed to the <i>Duces Francorum</i> at Paris; Rolf became the man of
+the Karolingian king at Laon.&nbsp; France and Normandy were two great
+duchies, each owning a precarious supremacy in the king of the West-Franks.&nbsp;
+On the one hand, Normandy had been called into being by a frightful
+dismemberment of the French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement
+had been cut off.&nbsp; France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest
+cities, and she was cut off from the sea and from the lower course of
+her own river.&nbsp; On the other hand, the French and the Norman dukes
+had found their interest in a close alliance; Norman support had done
+much to transfer the crown from Laon to Paris, and to make the <i>Dux
+Francorum</i> and the <i>Rex Francorum</i> the same person.&nbsp; It
+was the adoption of the French speech and manners by the Normans, and
+their steady alliance with the French dukes, which finally determined
+that the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not Teutonic,
+and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and not Aquitanian.&nbsp;
+If the creation of Normandy had done much to weaken France as a duchy,
+it had done not a little towards the making of France as a kingdom.&nbsp;
+Laon and its crown, the undefined influence that went with the crown,
+the prospect of future advance to the south, had been bought by the
+loss of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine.</p>
+<p>There was much therefore at the time of William&rsquo;s accession
+to keep the French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms.&nbsp;
+The old alliance had been strengthened by recent good offices.&nbsp;
+The reigning king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help of William&rsquo;s
+father Robert.&nbsp; On the other hand, the original ground of the alliance,
+mutual support against the Karolingian king, had passed away.&nbsp;
+A King of the French reigning at Paris was more likely to remember what
+the Normans had cost him as duke than what they had done for him as
+king.&nbsp; And the alliance was only an alliance of princes.&nbsp;
+The mutual dislike between the people of the two countries was strong.&nbsp;
+The Normans had learned French ways, but French and Normans had not
+become countrymen.&nbsp; And, as the fame of Normandy grew, jealousy
+was doubtless mingled with dislike.&nbsp; William, in short, inherited
+a very doubtful and dangerous state of relations towards the king who
+was at once his chief neighbour and his overlord.</p>
+<p>More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the young
+duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the kinsfolk
+of his own house.&nbsp; William was not as yet the Great or the Conqueror,
+but he was the Bastard from the beginning.&nbsp; There was then no generally
+received doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms and duchies.&nbsp;
+Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates
+for the succession.&nbsp; Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine
+was strong, a full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father.&nbsp;
+The growth of feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary
+principle.&nbsp; Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for cases
+where the late prince had not left a full-grown son.&nbsp; The question
+as to legitimate birth was equally unsettled.&nbsp; Irregular unions
+of all kinds, though condemned by the Church, were tolerated in practice,
+and were nowhere more common than among the Norman dukes.&nbsp; In truth
+the feeling of the kingliness of the stock, the doctrine that the king
+should be the son of a king, is better satisfied by the succession of
+the late king&rsquo;s bastard son than by sending for some distant kinsman,
+claiming perhaps only through females.&nbsp; Still bastardy, if it was
+often convenient to forget it, could always be turned against a man.&nbsp;
+The succession of a bastard was never likely to be quite undisputed
+or his reign to be quite undisturbed.</p>
+<p>Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage
+of being at once bastard and minor.&nbsp; He was born at Falaise in
+1027 or 1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only
+Count of Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter
+of Fulbert the tanner.&nbsp; There was no pretence of marriage between
+his parents; yet his father, when he designed William to succeed him,
+might have made him legitimate, as some of his predecessors had been
+made, by a marriage with his mother.&nbsp; In 1028 Robert succeeded
+his brother Richard in the duchy.&nbsp; In 1034 or 1035 he determined
+to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.&nbsp; He called on his barons to swear
+allegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his successor in case
+he never came back.&nbsp; Their wise counsel to stay at home, to look
+after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, was unheeded.&nbsp;
+Robert carried his point.&nbsp; The succession of young William was
+accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by the overlord Henry
+King of the French.&nbsp; The arrangement soon took effect.&nbsp; Robert
+died on his way back before the year 1035 was out, and his son began,
+in name at least, his reign of fifty-two years over the Norman duchy.</p>
+<p>The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could happen
+only when no one else had a distinctly better claim William could never
+have held his ground for a moment against a brother of his father of
+full age and undoubted legitimacy.&nbsp; But among the living descendants
+of former dukes some were themselves of doubtful legitimacy, some were
+shut out by their profession as churchmen, some claimed only through
+females.&nbsp; Robert had indeed two half-brothers, but they were young
+and their legitimacy was disputed; he had an uncle, Robert Archbishop
+of Rouen, who had been legitimated by the later marriage of his parents.&nbsp;
+The rival who in the end gave William most trouble was his cousin Guy
+of Burgundy, son of a daughter of his grandfather Richard the Good.&nbsp;
+Though William&rsquo;s succession was not liked, no one of these candidates
+was generally preferred to him.&nbsp; He therefore succeeded; but the
+first twelve years of his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies
+of unruly nobles, who hated the young duke as the one representative
+of law and order, and who were not eager to set any one in his place
+who might be better able to enforce them.</p>
+<p>Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took
+in two classes of men.&nbsp; All were noble who had any kindred or affinity,
+legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house.&nbsp; The natural children
+of Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his marriage with their
+mother Gunnor, and many of the great houses of Normandy sprang from
+her brothers and sisters.&nbsp; The mother of William received no such
+exaltation as this.&nbsp; Besides her son, she had borne to Robert a
+daughter Adelaide, and, after Robert&rsquo;s death, she married a Norman
+knight named Herlwin of Conteville.&nbsp; To him, besides a daughter,
+she bore two sons, Ode and Robert.&nbsp; They rose to high posts in
+Church and State, and played an important part in their half-brother&rsquo;s
+history.&nbsp; Besides men whose nobility was of this kind, there were
+also Norman houses whose privileges were older than the amours or marriages
+of any duke, houses whose greatness was as old as the settlement of
+Rolf, as old that is as the ducal power itself.&nbsp; The great men
+of both these classes were alike hard to control.&nbsp; A Norman baron
+of this age was well employed when he was merely rebelling against his
+prince or waging private war against a fellow baron.&nbsp; What specially
+marks the time is the frequency of treacherous murders wrought by men
+of the highest rank, often on harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests.&nbsp;
+But victims were also found among those guardians of the young duke
+whose faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility
+was not wholly corrupt.&nbsp; One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan
+Count of the Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter.&nbsp;
+Two others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular
+kinsmen of the duke.&nbsp; All these were murdered, the Breton count
+by poison.&nbsp; Such a childhood as this made William play the man
+while he was still a child.&nbsp; The helpless boy had to seek for support
+of some kind.&nbsp; He got together the chief men of his duchy, and
+took a new guardian by their advice.&nbsp; But it marks the state of
+things that the new guardian was one of the murderers of those whom
+he succeeded.&nbsp; This was Ralph of Wacey, son of William&rsquo;s
+great-uncle, Archbishop Robert.&nbsp; Murderer as he was, he seems to
+have discharged his duty faithfully.&nbsp; There are men who are careless
+of general moral obligations, but who will strictly carry out any charge
+which appeals to personal honour.&nbsp; Anyhow Ralph&rsquo;s guardianship
+brought with it a certain amount of calm.&nbsp; But men, high in the
+young duke&rsquo;s favour, were still plotting against him, and they
+presently began to plot, not only against their prince but against their
+country.&nbsp; The disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper
+against young William in his lord King Henry of Paris.</p>
+<p>The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since much earlier
+times.&nbsp; The king who owed his crown to William&rsquo;s father,
+and who could have no ground of offence against William himself, easily
+found good pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs.&nbsp; It was not
+unnatural in the King of the French to wish to win back a sea-board
+which had been given up more than a hundred years before to an alien
+power, even though that power had, for much more than half of that time,
+acted more than a friendly part towards France.&nbsp; It was not unnatural
+that the French people should cherish a strong national dislike to the
+Normans and a strong wish that Rouen should again be a French city.&nbsp;
+But such motives were not openly avowed then any more than now.&nbsp;
+The alleged ground was quite different.&nbsp; The counts of Chartres
+were troublesome neighbours to the duchy, and the castle of Tilli&egrave;res
+had been built as a defence against them.&nbsp; An advance of the King&rsquo;s
+dominions had made Tilli&egrave;res a neighbour of France, and, as a
+neighbour, it was said to be a standing menace.&nbsp; The King of the
+French, acting in concert with the disaffected party in Normandy, was
+a dangerous enemy, and the young Duke and his counsellors determined
+to give up Tilli&egrave;res.&nbsp; Now comes the first distinct exercise
+of William&rsquo;s personal will.&nbsp; We are without exact dates,
+but the time can be hardly later than 1040, when William was from twelve
+to thirteen years old.&nbsp; At his special request, the defender of
+Tilli&egrave;res, Gilbert Crispin, who at first held out against French
+and Normans alike, gave up the castle to Henry.&nbsp; The castle was
+burned; the King promised not to repair it for four years.&nbsp; Yet
+he is said to have entered Normandy, to have laid waste William&rsquo;s
+native district of Hiesmois, to have supplied a French garrison to a
+Norman rebel named Thurstan, who held the castle of Falaise against
+the Duke, and to have ended by restoring Tilli&egrave;res as a menace
+against Normandy.&nbsp; And now the boy whose destiny had made him so
+early a leader of men had to bear his first arms against the fortress
+which looked down on his birth-place.&nbsp; Thurstan surrendered and
+went into banishment.&nbsp; William could set down his own Falaise as
+the first of a long list of towns and castles which he knew how to win
+without shedding of blood.</p>
+<p>When we next see William&rsquo;s distinct personal action, he is
+still young, but no longer a child or even a boy.&nbsp; At nineteen
+or thereabouts he is a wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdom
+are tried to the uttermost.&nbsp; A few years of comparative quiet were
+chiefly occupied, as a quiet time in those days commonly was, with ecclesiastical
+affairs.&nbsp; One of these specially illustrates the state of things
+with which William had to deal.&nbsp; In 1042, when the Duke was about
+fourteen, Normandy adopted the Truce of God in its later shape.&nbsp;
+It no longer attempted to establish universal peace; it satisfied itself
+with forbidding, under the strongest ecclesiastical censures, all private
+war and violence of any kind on certain days of the week.&nbsp; Legislation
+of this kind has two sides.&nbsp; It was an immediate gain if peace
+was really enforced for four days in the week; but that which was not
+forbidden on the other three could no longer be denounced as in itself
+evil.&nbsp; We are told that in no land was the Truce more strictly
+observed than in Normandy.&nbsp; But we may be sure that, when William
+was in the fulness of his power, the stern weight of the ducal arm was
+exerted to enforce peace on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as on Thursdays
+and Fridays.</p>
+<p>It was in the year 1047 that William&rsquo;s authority was most dangerously
+threatened and that he was first called on to show in all their fulness
+the powers that were in him.&nbsp; He who was to be conqueror of Maine
+and conqueror of England was first to be conqueror of his own duchy.&nbsp;
+The revolt of a large part of the country, contrasted with the firm
+loyalty of another part, throws a most instructive light on the internal
+state of the duchy.&nbsp; There was, as there still is, a line of severance
+between the districts which formed the first grant to Rolf and those
+which were afterwards added.&nbsp; In these last a lingering remnant
+of old Teutonic life had been called into fresh strength by new settlements
+from Scandinavia.&nbsp; At the beginning of the reign of Richard the
+Fearless, Rouen, the French-speaking city, is emphatically contrasted
+with Bayeux, the once Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the
+Danish speech.&nbsp; At that stage the Danish party was distinctly a
+heathen party.&nbsp; We are not told whether Danish was still spoken
+so late as the time of William&rsquo;s youth.&nbsp; We can hardly believe
+that the Scandinavian gods still kept any avowed worshippers.&nbsp;
+But the geographical limits of the revolt exactly fall in with the boundary
+which had once divided French and Danish speech, Christian and heathen
+worship.&nbsp; There was a wide difference in feeling on the two sides
+of the Dive.&nbsp; The older Norman settlements, now thoroughly French
+in tongue and manners, stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to the
+west rose against him.&nbsp; Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to William;
+Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his enemies.</p>
+<p>When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised
+at the candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels.&nbsp;
+William was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a Frenchman.&nbsp;
+This was William&rsquo;s cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose connexion with
+the ducal house was only by the spindle-side.&nbsp; But his descent
+was of uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excuse for claiming
+the duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of the tanner.&nbsp;
+By William he had been enriched with great possessions, among which
+was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle.&nbsp; The real object
+of the revolt was the partition of the duchy.&nbsp; William was to be
+dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of Dive; the great
+lords of Western Normandy were to be left independent.&nbsp; To this
+end the lords of the Bessin and the C&ocirc;tentin revolted, their leader
+being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the C&ocirc;tentin.&nbsp; We
+are told that the mass of the people everywhere wished well to their
+duke; in the common sovereign lay their only chance of protection against
+their immediate lords.&nbsp; But the lords had armed force of the land
+at their bidding.&nbsp; They first tried to slay or seize the Duke himself,
+who chanced to be in the midst of them at Valognes.&nbsp; He escaped;
+we hear a stirring tale of his headlong ride from Valognes to Falaise.&nbsp;
+Safe among his own people, he planned his course of action.&nbsp; He
+first sought help of the man who could give him most help, but who had
+most wronged him.&nbsp; He went into France; he saw King Henry at Poissy,
+and the King engaged to bring a French force to William&rsquo;s help
+under his own command.</p>
+<p>This time Henry kept his promise.&nbsp; The dismemberment of Normandy
+might have been profitable to France by weakening the power which had
+become so special an object of French jealousy; but with a king the
+common interest of princes against rebellious barons came first.&nbsp;
+Henry came with a French army, and fought well for his ally on the field
+of Val-&egrave;s-dunes.&nbsp; Now came the Conqueror&rsquo;s first battle,
+a tourney of horsemen on an open table-land just within the land of
+the rebels between Caen and Mezidon.&nbsp; The young duke fought well
+and manfully; but the Norman writers allow that it was French help that
+gained him the victory.&nbsp; Yet one of the many anecdotes of the battle
+points to a source of strength which was always ready to tell for any
+lord against rebellious vassals.&nbsp; One of the leaders of the revolt,
+Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred by the prayers of his
+knights, joined the Duke just before the battle.&nbsp; He had sworn
+to smite William wherever he found him, and he fulfilled his oath by
+giving the Duke a harmless blow with his glove.&nbsp; How far an oath
+to do an unlawful act is binding is a question which came up again at
+another stage of William&rsquo;s life.</p>
+<p>The victory at Val-&egrave;s-dunes was decisive, and the French King,
+whose help had done so much to win it, left William to follow it up.&nbsp;
+He met with but little resistance except at the stronghold of Brionne.&nbsp;
+Guy himself vanishes from Norman history.&nbsp; William had now conquered
+his own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help.&nbsp; For the rest
+of his Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies at home, but
+he had never to put down such a rebellion again as that of the lords
+of western Normandy.&nbsp; That western Normandy, the truest Normandy,
+had to yield to the more thoroughly Romanized lands to the east.&nbsp;
+The difference between them never again takes a political shape.&nbsp;
+William was now lord of all Normandy, and able to put down all later
+disturbers of the peace.&nbsp; His real reign now begins; from the age
+of nineteen or twenty, his acts are his own.&nbsp; According to his
+abiding practice, he showed himself a merciful conqueror.&nbsp; Through
+his whole reign he shows a distinct unwillingness to take human life
+except in fair fighting on the battle-field.&nbsp; No blood was shed
+after the victory of Val-&egrave;s-dunes; one rebel died in bonds; the
+others underwent no harder punishment than payment of fines, giving
+of hostages, and destruction of their castles.&nbsp; These castles were
+not as yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days.&nbsp;
+A single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound
+surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous.&nbsp;
+The possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to
+defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours.&nbsp;
+Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every
+return of order brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition
+of peace.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been schooled
+for the rule of men.&nbsp; He had now, in the rule of a smaller dominion,
+in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled for the conquest
+and the rule of a greater dominion.&nbsp; William had the gifts of a
+born ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse them.&nbsp; We know
+his rule in Normandy only through the language of panegyric; but the
+facts speak for themselves.&nbsp; He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing,
+more peaceful and flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European
+mainland.&nbsp; He is set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent
+ruler, the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce
+and of all that might profit his dominions.&nbsp; For defensive wars,
+for wars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot blame
+him.&nbsp; But his main duty lay at home.&nbsp; He still had revolts
+to put down, and he put them down.&nbsp; But to put them down was the
+first of good works.&nbsp; He had to keep the peace of the land, to
+put some cheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom
+only an arm like his could put any cheek.&nbsp; He had, in the language
+of his day, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment,
+whoever was the wrong-doer.&nbsp; If a ruler did this first of duties
+well, much was easily forgiven him in other ways.&nbsp; But William
+had as yet little to be forgiven.&nbsp; Throughout life he steadily
+practised some unusual virtues.&nbsp; His strict attention to religion
+was always marked.&nbsp; And his religion was not that mere lavish bounty
+to the Church which was consistent with any amount of cruelty or license.&nbsp;
+William&rsquo;s religion really influenced his life, public and private.&nbsp;
+He set an unusual example of a princely household governed according
+to the rules of morality, and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in
+the spirit of a true reformer.&nbsp; He did not, like so many princes
+of his age, make ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain,
+but promoted good men from all quarters.&nbsp; His own education is
+not likely to have received much attention; it is not clear whether
+he had mastered the rarer art of writing or the more usual one of reading;
+but both his promotion of learned churchmen and the care given to the
+education of some of his children show that he at least valued the best
+attainments of his time.&nbsp; Had William&rsquo;s whole life been spent
+in the duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely, defending it
+manfully, the world might never have known him for one of its foremost
+men, but his life on that narrower field would have been useful and
+honourable almost without a drawback.&nbsp; It was the fatal temptation
+of princes, the temptation to territorial aggrandizement, which enabled
+him fully to show the powers that were in him, but which at the same
+time led to his moral degradation.&nbsp; The defender of his own land
+became the invader of other lands, and the invader could not fail often
+to sink into the oppressor.&nbsp; Each step in his career as Conqueror
+was a step downwards.&nbsp; Maine was a neighbouring land, a land of
+the same speech, a land which, if the feelings of the time could have
+allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost nothing by an union
+with Normandy.&nbsp; England, a land apart, a land of speech, laws,
+and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was in another
+case.&nbsp; There the Conqueror was driven to be the oppressor.&nbsp;
+Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further wrong.</p>
+<p>With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider,
+on which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing to
+do.&nbsp; It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the English
+succession may have entered his mind or that of his advisers.&nbsp;
+When William began his real reign after Val-&egrave;s-dunes, Norman
+influence was high in England.&nbsp; Edward the Confessor had spent
+his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways and the company
+of Normans and other men of French speech.&nbsp; Strangers from the
+favoured lands held endless posts in Church and State; above all, Robert
+of Jumi&egrave;ges, first Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury,
+was the King&rsquo;s special favourite and adviser.&nbsp; These men
+may have suggested the thought of William&rsquo;s succession very early.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, at this time it was by no means clear that Edward
+might not leave a son of his own.&nbsp; He had been only a few years
+married, and his alleged vow of chastity is very doubtful.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+claim was of the flimsiest kind.&nbsp; By English custom the king was
+chosen out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended
+from kings in the male line were counted as members of that house.&nbsp;
+William was not descended, even in the female line, from any English
+king; his whole kindred with Edward was that Edward&rsquo;s mother Emma,
+a daughter of Richard the Fearless, was William&rsquo;s great-aunt.&nbsp;
+Such a kindred, to say nothing of William&rsquo;s bastardy, could give
+no right to the crown according to any doctrine of succession that ever
+was heard of.&nbsp; It could at most point him out as a candidate for
+adoption, in case the reigning king should be disposed and allowed to
+choose his successor.&nbsp; William or his advisers may have begun to
+weigh this chance very early; but all that is really certain is that
+William was a friend and favourite of his elder kinsman, and that events
+finally brought his succession to the English crown within the range
+of things that might be.</p>
+<p>But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond
+the bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his
+great continental conquest.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s first war out of Normandy
+was waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of
+Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine.&nbsp; William undoubtedly owed
+a debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-&egrave;s-dunes,
+and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjou and Normandy.&nbsp;
+Both powers asserted rights over the intermediate land of Maine.&nbsp;
+In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in a war with Anjou, and
+we hear wonderful but vague tales of his exploits.&nbsp; The really
+instructive part of the story deals with two border fortresses on the
+march of Normandy and Maine.&nbsp; Alen&ccedil;on lay on the Norman
+side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy.&nbsp; Brionne was
+still holding out for Guy of Burgundy.&nbsp; The town was a lordship
+of the house of Bell&ecirc;me, a house renowned for power and wickedness,
+and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and of France,
+ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles.&nbsp; The story
+went that William Talvas, lord of Bell&ecirc;me, one of the fiercest
+of his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and
+his should be brought to shame.&nbsp; Such a tale set forth the noblest
+side of William&rsquo;s character, as the man who did something to put
+down such enemies of mankind as he who cursed him.&nbsp; The possessions
+of William Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery,
+a man who plays a great part in William&rsquo;s history; but it is the
+disloyalty of the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just
+now.&nbsp; They willingly admitted an Angevin garrison.&nbsp; William
+in return laid siege to Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which
+was then an outpost of Maine against Normandy.&nbsp; A long skirmishing
+warfare, in which William won for himself a name by deeds of personal
+prowess, went on during the autumn and winter (1048-49).&nbsp; One tale
+specially illustrates more than one point in the feelings of the time.&nbsp;
+The two princes, William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each
+gives the other notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that
+he may not be mistaken.&nbsp; The spirit of knight-errantry was coming
+in, and we see that William himself in his younger days was touched
+by it.&nbsp; But we see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown.&nbsp;
+Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge
+and decamp in the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon
+Alen&ccedil;on.&nbsp; The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery
+of his birth.&nbsp; They hung out skins, and shouted, &ldquo;Hides for
+the Tanner.&rdquo;&nbsp; Personal insult is always hard for princes
+to bear, and the wrath of William was stirred up to a pitch which made
+him for once depart from his usual moderation towards conquered enemies.&nbsp;
+He swore that the men who had jeered at him should be dealt with like
+a tree whose branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife.&nbsp; The
+town was taken by assault, and William kept his oath.&nbsp; The castle
+held out; the hands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alen&ccedil;on
+were thrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison
+to surrender on promise of safety for life and limb.&nbsp; The defenders
+of Domfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their arms
+as well as their lives and limbs.&nbsp; William had thus won back his
+own rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his first conquest.&nbsp;
+He went farther south, and fortified another castle at Ambri&egrave;res;
+but Ambri&egrave;res was only a temporary conquest.&nbsp; Domfront has
+ever since been counted as part of Normandy.&nbsp; But, as ecclesiastical
+divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of an earlier time,
+Domfront remained down to the great French Revolution in the spiritual
+jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was before
+long to show himself in England, though not yet as conqueror.&nbsp;
+If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still in this interval to
+complete his conquest of his own duchy by securing the surrender of
+Brionne; and two other events, both characteristic, one of them memorable,
+fill up the same time.&nbsp; William now banished a kinsman of his own
+name, who held the great county of Mortain, <i>Moretoliam</i> or <i>Moretonium</i>,
+in the diocese of Avranches, which must be carefully distinguished from
+Mortagne-en-Perche, <i>Mauritania</i> or <i>Moretonia</i> in the diocese
+of Seez.&nbsp; This act, of somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy
+on two grounds.&nbsp; First, the accuser of the banished count was one
+who was then a poor serving-knight of his own, but who became the forefather
+of a house which plays a great part in English history, Robert surnamed
+the Bigod.&nbsp; Secondly, the vacant county was granted by William
+to his own half-brother Robert.&nbsp; He had already in 1048 bestowed
+the bishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother Odo, who cannot at
+that time have been more than twelve years old.&nbsp; He must therefore
+have held the see for a good while without consecration, and at no time
+of his fifty years&rsquo; holding of it did he show any very episcopal
+merits.&nbsp; This was the last case in William&rsquo;s reign of an
+old abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy had been
+turned into means of providing for members, often unworthy members,
+of the ducal family; and it is the only one for which William can have
+been personally responsible.&nbsp; Both his brothers were thus placed
+very early in life among the chief men of Normandy, as they were in
+later years to be placed among the chief men of England.&nbsp; But William&rsquo;s
+affection for his brothers, amiable as it may have been personally,
+was assuredly not among the brighter parts of his character as a sovereign.</p>
+<p>The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side
+of William&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; The long story of his marriage now begins.&nbsp;
+The date is fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held
+in 1049 by Pope Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders is
+forbidden to give his daughter to William the Norman.&nbsp; This implies
+that the marriage was already thought of, and further that it was looked
+on as uncanonical.&nbsp; The bride whom William sought, Matilda daughter
+of Baldwin the Fifth, was connected with him by some tie of kindred
+or affinity which made a marriage between them unlawful by the rules
+of the Church.&nbsp; But no genealogist has yet been able to find out
+exactly what the canonical hindrance was.&nbsp; It is hard to trace
+the descent of William and Matilda up to any common forefather.&nbsp;
+But the light which the story throws on William&rsquo;s character is
+the same in any case.&nbsp; Whether he was seeking a wife or a kingdom,
+he would have his will, but he could wait for it.&nbsp; In William&rsquo;s
+doubtful position, a marriage with the daughter of the Count of Flanders
+would be useful to him in many ways; and Matilda won her husband&rsquo;s
+abiding love and trust.&nbsp; Strange tales are told of William&rsquo;s
+wooing.&nbsp; Tales are told also of Matilda&rsquo;s earlier love for
+the Englishman Brihtric, who is said to have found favour in her eyes
+when he came as envoy from England to her father&rsquo;s court.&nbsp;
+All that is certain is that the marriage had been thought of and had
+been forbidden before the next important event in William&rsquo;s life
+that we have to record.</p>
+<p>Was William&rsquo;s Flemish marriage in any way connected with his
+hopes of succession to the English crown?&nbsp; Had there been any available
+bride for him in England, it might have been for his interest to seek
+for her there.&nbsp; But it should be noticed, though no ancient writer
+points out the fact, that Matilda was actually descended from Alfred
+in the female line; so that William&rsquo;s children, though not William
+himself, had some few drops of English blood in their veins.&nbsp; William
+or his advisers, in weighing every chance which might help his interests
+in the direction of England, may have reckoned this piece of rather
+ancient genealogy among the advantages of a Flemish alliance.&nbsp;
+But it is far more certain that, between the forbidding of the marriage
+and the marriage itself, a direct hope of succession to the English
+crown had been opened to the Norman duke.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III&mdash;WILLIAM&rsquo;S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND&mdash;A.D.
+1051-1052</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>While William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Norman influence
+in England had risen to its full height.&nbsp; The king was surrounded
+by foreign favourites.&nbsp; The only foreign earl was his nephew Ralph
+of Mentes, the son of his sister Godgifu.&nbsp; But three chief bishoprics
+were held by Normans, Robert of Canterbury, William of London, and Ulf
+of Dorchester.&nbsp; William bears a good character, and won the esteem
+of Englishmen; but the unlearned Ulf is emphatically said to have done
+&ldquo;nought bishoplike.&rdquo;&nbsp; Smaller preferments in Church
+and State, estates in all parts of the kingdom, were lavishly granted
+to strangers.&nbsp; They built castles, and otherwise gave offence to
+English feeling.&nbsp; Archbishop Robert, above all, was ever plotting
+against Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons, the head of the national party.&nbsp;
+At last, in the autumn of 1051, the national indignation burst forth.&nbsp;
+The immediate occasion was a visit paid to the King by Count Eustace
+of Boulogne, who had just married the widowed Countess Godgifu.&nbsp;
+The violent dealings of his followers towards the burghers of Dover
+led to resistance on their part, and to a long series of marches and
+negotiations, which ended in the banishment of Godwine and his son,
+and the parting of his daughter Edith, the King&rsquo;s wife, from her
+husband.&nbsp; From October 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had
+their own way in England.&nbsp; And during that time King Edward received
+a visitor of greater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the
+person of his cousin from Rouen.</p>
+<p>Of his visit we only read that &ldquo;William Earl came from beyond
+sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and
+as many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Another account adds that William received great gifts from the King.&nbsp;
+But William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as his lord;
+he must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act of homage,
+and there is no time but this at which we can conceive such an act being
+done.&nbsp; Now for what was the homage paid?&nbsp; Homage was often
+paid on very trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of allegiance
+often followed.&nbsp; No such conflict was likely to arise if the Duke
+of the Normans, already the man of the King of the French for his duchy,
+became the man of the King of the English on any other ground.&nbsp;
+Betwixt England and France there was as yet no enmity or rivalry.&nbsp;
+England and France became enemies afterwards because the King of the
+English and the Duke of the Normans were one person.&nbsp; And this
+visit, this homage, was the first step towards making the King of the
+English and the Duke of the Normans the same person.&nbsp; The claim
+William had to the English crown rested mainly on an alleged promise
+of the succession made by Edward.&nbsp; This claim is not likely to
+have been a mere shameless falsehood.&nbsp; That Edward did make some
+promise to William&mdash;as that Harold, at a later stage, did take
+some oath to William&mdash;seems fully proved by the fact that, while
+such Norman statements as could be denied were emphatically denied by
+the English writers, on these two points the most patriotic Englishmen,
+the strongest partisans of Harold, keep a marked silence.&nbsp; We may
+be sure therefore that some promise was made; for that promise a time
+must be found, and no time seems possible except this time of William&rsquo;s
+visit to Edward.&nbsp; The date rests on no direct authority, but it
+answers every requirement.&nbsp; Those who spoke of the promise as being
+made earlier, when William and Edward were boys together in Normandy,
+forgot that Edward was many years older than William.&nbsp; The only
+possible moment earlier than the visit was when Edward was elected king
+in 1042.&nbsp; Before that time he could hardly have thought of disposing
+of a kingdom which was not his, and at that time he might have looked
+forward to leaving sons to succeed him.&nbsp; Still less could the promise
+have been made later than the visit.&nbsp; From 1053 to the end of his
+life Edward was under English influences, which led him first to send
+for his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in the end
+to make a recommendation in favour of Harold.&nbsp; But in 1051-52 Edward,
+whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope of children;
+he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only time in the
+last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and William met face
+to face.&nbsp; The only difficulty is one to which no contemporary writer
+makes any reference.&nbsp; If Edward wished to dispose of his crown
+in favour of one of his French-speaking kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman
+of whom he might more naturally have thought.&nbsp; His own nephew Ralph
+was living in England and holding an English earldom.&nbsp; He had the
+advantage over both William and his own older brother Walter of Mantes,
+in not being a reigning prince elsewhere.&nbsp; We can only say that
+there is evidence that Edward did think of William, that there is no
+evidence that he ever thought of Ralph.&nbsp; And, except the tie of
+nearer kindred, everything would suggest William rather than Ralph.&nbsp;
+The personal comparison is almost grotesque; and Edward&rsquo;s early
+associations and the strongest influences around him, were not vaguely
+French but specially Norman.&nbsp; Archbishop Robert would plead for
+his own native sovereign only.&nbsp; In short, we may be as nearly sure
+as we can be of any fact for which there is no direct authority, that
+Edward&rsquo;s promise to William was made at the time of William&rsquo;s
+visit to England, and that William&rsquo;s homage to Edward was done
+in the character of a destined successor to the English crown.</p>
+<p>William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandy
+a king expectant.&nbsp; But the value of his hopes, to the value of
+the promise made to him, are quite another matter.&nbsp; Most likely
+they were rated on both sides far above their real value.&nbsp; King
+and duke may both have believed that they were making a settlement which
+the English nation was bound to respect.&nbsp; If so, Edward at least
+was undeceived within a few months.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The notion of a king disposing of his crown by his own act belongs
+to the same range of ideas as the law of strict hereditary succession.&nbsp;
+It implies that kingship is a possession and not an office.&nbsp; Neither
+the heathen nor the Christian English had ever admitted that doctrine;
+but it was fast growing on the continent.&nbsp; Our forefathers had
+always combined respect for the kingly house with some measure of choice
+among the members of that house.&nbsp; Edward himself was not the lawful
+heir according to the notions of a modern lawyer; for he was chosen
+while the son of his elder brother was living.&nbsp; Every English king
+held his crown by the gift of the great assembly of the nation, though
+the choice of the nation was usually limited to the descendants of former
+kings, and though the full-grown son of the late king was seldom opposed.&nbsp;
+Christianity had strengthened the election principle.&nbsp; The king
+lost his old sanctity as the son of Woden; he gained a new sanctity
+as the Lord&rsquo;s anointed.&nbsp; But kingship thereby became more
+distinctly an office, a great post, like a bishopric, to which its holder
+had to be lawfully chosen and admitted by solemn rites.&nbsp; But of
+that office he could be lawfully deprived, nor could he hand it on to
+a successor either according to his own will or according to any strict
+law of succession.&nbsp; The wishes of the late king, like the wishes
+of the late bishop, went for something with the electors.&nbsp; But
+that was all.&nbsp; All that Edward could really do for his kinsmen
+was to promise to make, when the time came, a recommendation to the
+Witan in his favour.&nbsp; The Witan might then deal as they thought
+good with a recommendation so unusual as to choose to the kingship of
+England a man who was neither a native nor a conqueror of England nor
+the descendant of any English king.</p>
+<p>When the time came, Edward did make a recommendation to the Witan,
+but it was not in favour of William.&nbsp; The English influences under
+which he was brought during his last fourteen years taught him better
+what the law of England was and what was the duty of an English king.&nbsp;
+But at the time of William&rsquo;s visit Edward may well have believed
+that he could by his own act settle his crown on his Norman kinsman
+as his undoubted successor in case he died without a son.&nbsp; And
+it may be that Edward was bound by a vow not to leave a son.&nbsp; And
+if Edward so thought, William naturally thought so yet more; he would
+sincerely believe himself to be the lawful heir of the crown of England,
+the sole lawful successor, except in one contingency which was perhaps
+impossible and certainly unlikely.</p>
+<p>The memorials of these times, so full on some points, are meagre
+on others.&nbsp; Of those writers who mention the bequest or promise
+none mention it at any time when it is supposed to have happened; they
+mention it at some later time when it began to be of practical importance.&nbsp;
+No English writer speaks of William&rsquo;s claim till the time when
+he was about practically to assert it; no Norman writer speaks of it
+till he tells the tale of Harold&rsquo;s visit and oath to William.&nbsp;
+We therefore cannot say how far the promise was known either in England
+or on the continent.&nbsp; But it could not be kept altogether hid,
+even if either party wished it to be hid.&nbsp; English statesmen must
+have known of it, and must have guided their policy accordingly, whether
+it was generally known in the country or not.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+position, both in his own duchy and among neighbouring princes, would
+be greatly improved if he could be looked upon as a future king.&nbsp;
+As heir to the crown of England, he may have more earnestly wooed the
+descendant of former wearers of the crown; and Matilda and her father
+may have looked more favourably on a suitor to whom the crown of England
+was promised.&nbsp; On the other hand, the existence of such a foreign
+claimant made it more needful than ever for Englishmen to be ready with
+an English successor, in the royal house or out of it, the moment the
+reigning king should pass away.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>It was only for a short time that William could have had any reasonable
+hope of a peaceful succession.&nbsp; The time of Norman influence in
+England was short.&nbsp; The revolution of September 1052 brought Godwine
+back, and placed the rule of England again in English hands.&nbsp; Many
+Normans were banished, above all Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf.&nbsp;
+The death of Godwine the next year placed the chief power in the hands
+of his son Harold.&nbsp; This change undoubtedly made Edward more disposed
+to the national cause.&nbsp; Of Godwine, the man to whom he owed his
+crown, he was clearly in awe; to Godwine&rsquo;s sons he was personally
+attached.&nbsp; We know not how Edward was led to look on his promise
+to William as void.&nbsp; That he was so led is quite plain.&nbsp; He
+sent for his nephew the &AElig;theling Edward from Hungary, clearly
+as his intended successor.&nbsp; When the &AElig;theling died in 1057,
+leaving a son under age, men seem to have gradually come to look to
+Harold as the probable successor.&nbsp; He clearly held a special position
+above that of an ordinary earl; but there is no need to suppose any
+formal act in his favour till the time of the King&rsquo;s death, January
+5, 1066.&nbsp; On his deathbed Edward did all that he legally could
+do on behalf of Harold by recommending him to the Witan for election
+as the next king.&nbsp; That he then either made a new or renewed an
+old nomination in favour of William is a fable which is set aside by
+the witness of the contemporary English writers.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+claim rested wholly on that earlier nomination which could hardly have
+been made at any other time than his visit to England.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>We have now to follow William back to Normandy, for the remaining
+years of his purely ducal reign.&nbsp; The expectant king had doubtless
+thoughts and hopes which he had not had before.&nbsp; But we can guess
+at them only: they are not recorded.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY&mdash;A.D. 1052-1063</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>If William came back from England looking forward to a future crown,
+the thought might even then flash across his mind that he was not likely
+to win that crown without fighting for it.&nbsp; As yet his business
+was still to fight for the duchy of Normandy.&nbsp; But he had now to
+fight, not to win his duchy, but only to keep it.&nbsp; For five years
+he had to strive both against rebellious subjects and against invading
+enemies, among whom King Henry of Paris is again the foremost.&nbsp;
+Whatever motives had led the French king to help William at Val-&egrave;s-dunes
+had now passed away.&nbsp; He had fallen back on his former state of
+abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke.&nbsp; But this short period
+definitely fixed the position of Normandy and her duke in Gaul and in
+Europe.&nbsp; At its beginning William is still the Bastard of Falaise,
+who may or may not be able to keep himself in the ducal chair, his right
+to which is still disputed.&nbsp; At the end of it, if he is not yet
+the Conqueror and the Great, he has shown all the gifts that were needed
+to win him either name.&nbsp; He is the greatest vassal of the French
+crown, a vassal more powerful than the overlord whose invasions of his
+duchy he has had to drive back.</p>
+<p>These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his allies
+fall into two periods.&nbsp; At first Henry appears in Normandy as the
+supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke.&nbsp; But revolts
+are personal and local; there is no rebellion like that which was crushed
+at Val-&egrave;s-dunes, spreading over a large part of the duchy.&nbsp;
+In the second period, the invaders have no such starting-point.&nbsp;
+There are still traitors; there are still rebels; but all that they
+can do is to join the invaders after they have entered the land.&nbsp;
+William is still only making his way to the universal good will of his
+duchy: but he is fast making it.</p>
+<p>There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed
+date, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053.&nbsp; The
+rebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended the
+castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishment in France.&nbsp;
+But the year that followed William&rsquo;s visit to England saw the
+far more memorable revolt of William Count of Arques.&nbsp; He had drawn
+the Duke&rsquo;s suspicions on him, and he had to receive a ducal garrison
+in his great fortress by Dieppe.&nbsp; But the garrison betrayed the
+castle to its own master.&nbsp; Open revolt and havoc followed, in which
+Count William was supported by the king and by several other princes.&nbsp;
+Among them was Ingelram Count of Ponthieu, husband of the duke&rsquo;s
+sister Adelaide.&nbsp; Another enemy was Guy Count of Gascony, afterwards
+Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine.&nbsp; What quarrel a prince in
+the furthest corner of Gaul could have with the Duke of the Normans
+does not appear; but neither Count William nor his allies could withstand
+the loyal Normans and their prince.&nbsp; Count Ingelram was killed;
+the other princes withdrew to devise greater efforts against Normandy.&nbsp;
+Count William lost his castle and part of his estates, and left the
+duchy of his free will.&nbsp; The Duke&rsquo;s politic forbearance at
+last won him the general good will of his subjects.&nbsp; We hear of
+no more open revolts till that of William&rsquo;s own son many years
+after.&nbsp; But the assaults of foreign enemies, helped sometimes by
+Norman traitors, begin again the next year on a greater scale.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space.&nbsp;
+He had doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his marriage
+with Matilda of Flanders.&nbsp; Notwithstanding the decree of a Pope
+and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage was celebrated,
+not very long after William&rsquo;s return to Normandy, in the year
+of the revolt of William of Arques.&nbsp; In the course of the year
+1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontier at Eu,
+and there she became the bride of William.&nbsp; We know not what emboldened
+William to risk so daring a step at this particular time, or what led
+Baldwin to consent to it.&nbsp; If it was suggested by the imprisonment
+of Pope Leo by William&rsquo;s countrymen in Italy, in the hope that
+a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the captive pontiff,
+that hope was disappointed.&nbsp; The marriage raised much opposition
+in Normandy.&nbsp; It was denounced by Archbishop Malger of Rouen, the
+brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques.&nbsp; His character certainly
+added no weight to his censures; but the same act in a saint would have
+been set down as a sign of holy boldness.&nbsp; Presently, whether for
+his faults or for his merits, Malger was deposed in a synod of the Norman
+Church, and William found him a worthier successor in the learned and
+holy Maurilius.&nbsp; But a greater man than Malger also opposed the
+marriage, and the controversy thus introduces us to one who fills a
+place second only to that of William himself in the Norman and English
+history of the time.</p>
+<p>This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the model monk,
+the ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newly founded abbey
+of Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellors of the Duke.&nbsp;
+As duke and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop, William and Lanfranc
+ruled side by side, each helping the work of the other till the end
+of their joint lives.&nbsp; Once only, at this time, was their friendship
+broken for a moment.&nbsp; Lanfranc spoke against the marriage, and
+ventured to rebuke the Duke himself.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s wrath was
+kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into banishment and took a baser revenge
+by laying waste part of the lands of the abbey.&nbsp; But the quarrel
+was soon made up.&nbsp; Lanfranc presently left Normandy, not as a banished
+man, but as the envoy of its sovereign, commissioned to work for the
+confirmation of the marriage at the papal court.&nbsp; He worked, and
+his work was crowned with success, but not with speedy success.&nbsp;
+It was not till six years after the marriage, not till the year 1059,
+that Lanfranc obtained the wished for confirmation, not from Leo, but
+from his remote successor Nicolas the Second.&nbsp; The sin of those
+who had contracted the unlawful union was purged by various good works,
+among which the foundation of the two stately abbeys of Caen was conspicuous.</p>
+<p>This story illustrates many points in the character of William and
+of his time.&nbsp; His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matter
+of marriage or of any other.&nbsp; But he does not hurry matters; he
+waits for a favourable opportunity.&nbsp; Something, we know not what,
+must have made the year 1053 more favourable than the year 1049.&nbsp;
+We mark also William&rsquo;s relations to the Church.&nbsp; He is at
+no time disposed to submit quietly to the bidding of the spiritual power,
+when it interferes with his rights or even when it crosses his will.&nbsp;
+Yet he is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; he promotes men
+like Maurilius and Lanfranc; perhaps he is not displeased when the exercise
+of ecclesiastical discipline, in the case of Malger, frees him from
+a troublesome censor.&nbsp; But the worse side of him also comes out.&nbsp;
+William could forgive rebels, but he could not bear the personal rebuke
+even of his friend.&nbsp; Under this feeling he punishes a whole body
+of men for the offence of one.&nbsp; To lay waste the lands of Bec for
+the rebuke of Lanfranc was like an ordinary prince of the time; it was
+unlike William, if he had not been stirred up by a censure which touched
+his wife as well as himself.&nbsp; But above all, the bargain between
+William and Lanfranc is characteristic of the man and the age.&nbsp;
+Lanfranc goes to Rome to support a marriage which he had censured in
+Normandy.&nbsp; But there is no formal inconsistency, no forsaking of
+any principle.&nbsp; Lanfranc holds an uncanonical marriage to be a
+sin, and he denounces it.&nbsp; He does not withdraw his judgement as
+to its sinfulness.&nbsp; He simply uses his influence with a power that
+can forgive the sin to get it forgiven.</p>
+<p>While William&rsquo;s marriage was debated at Rome, he had to fight
+hard in Normandy.&nbsp; His warfare and his negotiations ended about
+the same time, and the two things may have had their bearing on one
+another.&nbsp; William had now to undergo a new form of trial.&nbsp;
+The King of the French had never put forth his full strength when he
+was simply backing Norman rebels.&nbsp; William had now, in two successive
+invasions, to withstand the whole power of the King, and of as many
+of his vassals as the King could bring to his standard.&nbsp; In the
+first invasion, in 1054, the Norman writers speak rhetorically of warriors
+from Burgundy, Auvergne, and Gascony; but it is hard to see any troops
+from a greater distance than Bourges.&nbsp; The princes who followed
+Henry seem to have been only the nearer vassals of the Crown.&nbsp;
+Chief among them are Theobald Count of Chartres, of a house of old hostile
+to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be often heard of
+again.&nbsp; If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his subjects from Tours
+were also there.&nbsp; Normandy was to be invaded on two sides, on both
+banks of the Seine.&nbsp; The King and his allies sought to wrest from
+William the western part of Normandy, the older and the more thoroughly
+French part.&nbsp; No attack seems to have been designed on the Bessin
+or the C&ocirc;tentin.&nbsp; William was to be allowed to keep those
+parts of his duchy, against which he had to fight when the King was
+his ally at Val-&egrave;s-dunes.</p>
+<p>The two armies entered Normandy; that which was to act on the left
+of the Seine was led by the King, the other by his brother Odo.&nbsp;
+Against the King William made ready to act himself; eastern Normandy
+was left to its own loyal nobles.&nbsp; But all Normandy was now loyal;
+the men of the Saxon and Danish lands were as ready to fight for their
+duke against the King as they had been to fight against King and Duke
+together.&nbsp; But William avoided pitched battles; indeed pitched
+battles are rare in the continental warfare of the time.&nbsp; War consists
+largely in surprises, and still more in the attack and defence of fortified
+places.&nbsp; The plan of William&rsquo;s present campaign was wholly
+defensive; provisions and cattle were to be carried out of the French
+line of march; the Duke on his side, the other Norman leaders on the
+other side, were to watch the enemy and attack them at any favourable
+moment.&nbsp; The commanders east of the Seine, Count Robert of Eu,
+Hugh of Gournay, William Crispin, and Walter Giffard, found their opportunity
+when the French had entered the unfortified town of Mortemer and had
+given themselves up to revelry.&nbsp; Fire and sword did the work.&nbsp;
+The whole French army was slain, scattered, or taken prisoners.&nbsp;
+Ode escaped; Guy of Ponthieu was taken.&nbsp; The Duke&rsquo;s success
+was still easier.&nbsp; The tale runs that the news from Mortemer, suddenly
+announced to the King&rsquo;s army in the dead of the night, struck
+them with panic, and led to a hasty retreat out of the land.</p>
+<p>This campaign is truly Norman; it is wholly unlike the simple warfare
+of England.&nbsp; A traitorous Englishman did nothing or helped the
+enemy; a patriotic Englishman gave battle to the enemy the first time
+he had a chance.&nbsp; But no English commander of the eleventh century
+was likely to lay so subtle a plan as this, and, if he had laid such
+a plan, he would hardly have found an English army able to carry it
+out.&nbsp; Harold, who refused to lay waste a rood of English ground,
+would hardly have looked quietly on while many roods of English ground
+were wasted by the enemy.&nbsp; With all the valour of the Normans,
+what before all things distinguished them from other nations was their
+craft.&nbsp; William could indeed fight a pitched battle when a pitched
+battle served his purpose; but he could control himself, he could control
+his followers, even to the point of enduring to look quietly on the
+havoc of their own land till the right moment.&nbsp; He who could do
+this was indeed practising for his calling as Conqueror.&nbsp; And if
+the details of the story, details specially characteristic, are to be
+believed, William showed something also of that grim pleasantry which
+was another marked feature in the Norman character.&nbsp; The startling
+message which struck the French army with panic was deliberately sent
+with that end.&nbsp; The messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, and,
+with a voice as from another world, bids the French awake; they are
+sleeping too long; let them go and bury their friends who are lying
+dead at Mortemer.&nbsp; These touches bring home to us the character
+of the man and the people with whom our forefathers had presently to
+deal.&nbsp; William was the greatest of his race, but he was essentially
+of his race; he was Norman to the backbone.</p>
+<p>Of the French army one division had been surprised and cut to pieces,
+the other had left Normandy without striking a blow.&nbsp; The war was
+not yet quite over; the French still kept Tilli&egrave;res; William
+accordingly fortified the stronghold of Breteuil as a cheek upon it.&nbsp;
+And he entrusted the command to a man who will soon be memorable, his
+personal friend William, son of his old guardian Osbern.&nbsp; King
+Henry was now glad to conclude a peace on somewhat remarkable terms.&nbsp;
+William had the king&rsquo;s leave to take what he could from Count
+Geoffrey of Anjou.&nbsp; He now annexed Cenomannian&mdash;that is just
+now Angevin&mdash;territory at more points than one, but chiefly on
+the line of his earlier advances to Domfront and Ambri&egrave;res.&nbsp;
+Ambri&egrave;res had perhaps been lost; for William now sent Geoffrey
+a challenge to come on the fortieth day.&nbsp; He came on the fortieth
+day, and found Ambri&egrave;res strongly fortified and occupied by a
+Norman garrison.&nbsp; With Geoffrey came the Breton prince Ode, and
+William or Peter Duke of Aquitaine.&nbsp; They besieged the castle;
+but Norman accounts add that they all fled on William&rsquo;s approach
+to relieve it.</p>
+<p>Three years of peace now followed, but in 1058 King Henry, this time
+in partnership with Geoffrey of Anjou, ventured another invasion of
+Normandy.&nbsp; He might say that he had never been fairly beaten in
+his former campaign, but that he had been simply cheated out of the
+land by Norman wiles.&nbsp; This time he had a second experience of
+Norman wiles and of Norman strength too.&nbsp; King and Count entered
+the land and ravaged far and wide.&nbsp; William, as before, allowed
+the enemy to waste the land.&nbsp; He watched and followed them till
+he found a favourable moment for attack.&nbsp; The people in general
+zealously helped the Duke&rsquo;s schemes, but some traitors of rank
+were still leagued with the Count of Anjou.&nbsp; While William bided
+his time, the invaders burned Caen.&nbsp; This place, so famous in Norman
+history, was not one of the ancient cities of the land.&nbsp; It was
+now merely growing into importance, and it was as yet undefended by
+walls or castle.&nbsp; But when the ravagers turned eastward, William
+found the opportunity that he had waited for.&nbsp; As the French were
+crossing the ford of Varaville on the Dive, near the mouth of that river,
+he came suddenly on them, and slaughtered a large part of the army under
+the eyes of the king who had already crossed.&nbsp; The remnant marched
+out of Normandy.</p>
+<p>Henry now made peace, and restored Tilli&egrave;res.&nbsp; Not long
+after, in 1060, the King died, leaving his young son Philip, who had
+been already crowned, as his successor, under the guardianship of William&rsquo;s
+father-in-law Baldwin.&nbsp; Geoffrey of Anjou and William of Aquitaine
+also died, and the Angevin power was weakened by the division of Geoffrey&rsquo;s
+dominions between his nephews.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s position was greatly
+strengthened, now that France, under the new regent, had become friendly,
+while Anjou was no longer able to do mischief.&nbsp; William had now
+nothing to fear from his neighbours, and the way was soon opened for
+his great continental conquest.&nbsp; But what effect had these events
+on William&rsquo;s views on England?&nbsp; About the time of the second
+French invasion of Normandy Earl Harold became beyond doubt the first
+man in England, and for the first time a chance of the royal succession
+was opened to him.&nbsp; In 1057, the year before Varaville, the &AElig;theling
+Edward, the King&rsquo;s selected successor, died soon after his coming
+to England; in the same year died the King&rsquo;s nephew Earl Ralph
+and Leofric Earl of the Mercians, the only Englishmen whose influence
+could at all compare with that of Harold.&nbsp; Harold&rsquo;s succession
+now became possible; it became even likely, if Edward should die while
+Edgar the son of the &AElig;theling was still under age.&nbsp; William
+had no shadow of excuse for interfering, but he doubtless was watching
+the internal affairs of England.&nbsp; Harold was certainly watching
+the affairs of Gaul.&nbsp; About this time, most likely in the year
+1058, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and on his way back he looked diligently
+into the state of things among the various vassals of the French crown.&nbsp;
+His exact purpose is veiled in ambiguous language; but we can hardly
+doubt that his object was to contract alliances with the continental
+enemies of Normandy.&nbsp; Such views looked to the distant future,
+as William had as yet been guilty of no unfriendly act towards England.&nbsp;
+But it was well to come to an understanding with King Henry, Count Geoffrey,
+and Duke William of Aquitaine, in case a time should come when their
+interests and those of England would be the same.&nbsp; But the deaths
+of all those princes must have put an end to all hopes of common action
+between England and any Gaulish power.&nbsp; The Emperor Henry also,
+the firm ally of England, was dead.&nbsp; It was now clear that, if
+England should ever have to withstand a Norman attack, she would have
+to withstand it wholly by her own strength, or with such help as she
+might find among the kindred powers of the North.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William&rsquo;s great continental conquest is drawing nigh; but between
+the campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came the tardy
+papal confirmation of William&rsquo;s marriage.&nbsp; The Duke and Duchess,
+now at last man and wife in the eye of the Church, began to carry out
+the works of penance which were allotted to them.&nbsp; The abbeys of
+Caen, William&rsquo;s Saint Stephen&rsquo;s, Matilda&rsquo;s Holy Trinity,
+now began to arise.&nbsp; Yet, at this moment of reparation, one or
+two facts seem to place William&rsquo;s government of his duchy in a
+less favourable light than usual.&nbsp; The last French invasion was
+followed by confiscations and banishments among the chief men of Normandy.&nbsp;
+Roger of Montgomery and his wife Mabel, who certainly was capable of
+any deed of blood or treachery, are charged with acting as false accusers.&nbsp;
+We see also that, as late as the day of Varaville, there were Norman
+traitors.&nbsp; Robert of Escalfoy had taken the Angevin side, and had
+defended his castle against the Duke.&nbsp; He died in a strange way,
+after snatching an apple from the hand of his own wife.&nbsp; His nephew
+Arnold remained in rebellion three years, and was simply required to
+go to the wars in Apulia.&nbsp; It is hard to believe that the Duke
+had poisoned the apple, if poisoned it was; but finding treason still
+at work among his nobles, he may have too hastily listened to charges
+against men who had done him good service, and who were to do him good
+service again.</p>
+<p>Five years after the combat at Varaville, William really began to
+deserve, though not as yet to receive, the name of Conqueror.&nbsp;
+For he now did a work second only to the conquest of England.&nbsp;
+He won the city of Le Mans and the whole land of Maine.&nbsp; Between
+the tale of Maine and the tale of England there is much of direct likeness.&nbsp;
+Both lands were won against the will of their inhabitants; but both
+conquests were made with an elaborate show of legal right.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+earlier conquests in Maine had been won, not from any count of Maine,
+but from Geoffrey of Anjou, who had occupied the country to the prejudice
+of two successive counts, Hugh and Herbert.&nbsp; He had further imprisoned
+the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervase of the house of Bell&ecirc;me, though
+the King of the French had at his request granted to the Count of Anjou
+for life royal rights over the bishopric of Le Mans.&nbsp; The bishops
+of Le Mans, who thus, unlike the bishops of Normandy, held their temporalities
+of the distant king and not of the local count, held a very independent
+position.&nbsp; The citizens of Le Mans too had large privileges and
+a high spirit to defend them; the city was in a marked way the head
+of the district.&nbsp; Thus it commonly carried with it the action of
+the whole country.&nbsp; In Maine there were three rival powers, the
+prince, the Church, and the people.&nbsp; The position of the counts
+was further weakened by the claims to their homage made by the princes
+on either side of them in Normandy and Anjou; the position of the Bishop,
+vassal, till Gervase&rsquo;s late act, of the King only, was really
+a higher one.&nbsp; Geoffrey had been received at Le Mans with the good
+will of the citizens, and both Bishop and Count sought shelter with
+William.&nbsp; Gervase was removed from the strife by promotion to the
+highest place in the French kingdom, the archbishopric of Rheims.&nbsp;
+The young Count Herbert, driven from his county, commended himself to
+William.&nbsp; He became his man; he agreed to hold his dominions of
+him, and to marry one of his daughters.&nbsp; If he died childless,
+his father-in-law was to take the fief into his own hands.&nbsp; But
+to unite the old and new dynasties, Herbert&rsquo;s youngest sister
+Margaret was to marry William&rsquo;s eldest son Robert.&nbsp; If female
+descent went for anything, it is not clear why Herbert passed by the
+rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, wife of Azo Marquess of
+Liguria, and Paula, wife of John of La Fl&egrave;che on the borders
+of Maine and Anjou.&nbsp; And sons both of Gersendis and of Paula did
+actually reign at Le Mans, while no child either of Herbert or of Margaret
+ever came into being.</p>
+<p>If Herbert ever actually got possession of his country, his possession
+of it was short.&nbsp; He died in 1063 before either of the contemplated
+marriages had been carried out.&nbsp; William therefore stood towards
+Maine as he expected to stand with regard to England.&nbsp; The sovereign
+of each country had made a formal settlement of his dominions in his
+favour.&nbsp; It was to be seen whether those who were most immediately
+concerned would accept that settlement.&nbsp; Was the rule either of
+Maine or of England to be handed over in this way, like a mere property,
+without the people who were to be ruled speaking their minds on the
+matter?&nbsp; What the people of England said to this question in 1066
+we shall hear presently; what the people of Maine said in 1063 we hear
+now.&nbsp; We know not why they had submitted to the Angevin count;
+they had now no mind to merge their country in the dominions of the
+Norman duke.&nbsp; The Bishop was neutral; but the nobles and the citizens
+of Le Mans were of one mind in refusing William&rsquo;s demand to be
+received as count by virtue of the agreement with Herbert.&nbsp; They
+chose rulers for themselves.&nbsp; Passing by Gersendis and Paula and
+their sons, they sent for Herbert&rsquo;s aunt Biota and her husband
+Walter Count of Mantes.&nbsp; Strangely enough, Walter, son of Godgifu
+daughter of &AElig;thelred, was a possible, though not a likely, candidate
+for the rule of England as well as of Maine.&nbsp; The people of Maine
+are not likely to have thought of this bit of genealogy.&nbsp; But it
+was doubtless present to the minds alike of William and of Harold.</p>
+<p>William thus, for the first but not for the last time, claimed the
+rule of a people who had no mind to have him as their ruler.&nbsp; Yet,
+morally worthless as were his claims over Maine, in the merely technical
+way of looking at things, he had more to say than most princes have
+who annex the lands of their neighbours.&nbsp; He had a perfectly good
+right by the terms of the agreement with Herbert.&nbsp; And it might
+be argued by any who admitted the Norman claim to the homage of Maine,
+that on the failure of male heirs the country reverted to the overlord.&nbsp;
+Yet female succession was now coming in.&nbsp; Anjou had passed to the
+sons of Geoffrey&rsquo;s sister; it had not fallen back to the French
+king.&nbsp; There was thus a twofold answer to William&rsquo;s claim,
+that Herbert could not grant away even the rights of his sisters, still
+less the rights of his people.&nbsp; Still it was characteristic of
+William that he had a case that might be plausibly argued.&nbsp; The
+people of Maine had fallen back on the old Teutonic right.&nbsp; They
+had chosen a prince connected with the old stock, but who was not the
+next heir according to any rule of succession.&nbsp; Walter was hardly
+worthy of such an exceptional honour; he showed no more energy in Maine
+than his brother Ralph had shown in England.&nbsp; The city was defended
+by Geoffrey, lord of Mayenne, a valiant man who fills a large place
+in the local history.&nbsp; But no valour or skill could withstand William&rsquo;s
+plan of warfare.&nbsp; He invaded Maine in much the same sort in which
+he had defended Normandy.&nbsp; He gave out that he wished to win Maine
+without shedding man&rsquo;s blood.&nbsp; He fought no battles; he did
+not attack the city, which he left to be the last spot that should be
+devoured.&nbsp; He harried the open country, he occupied the smaller
+posts, till the citizens were driven, against Geoffrey&rsquo;s will,
+to surrender.&nbsp; William entered Le Mans; he was received, we are
+told, with joy.&nbsp; When men make the best of a bad bargain, they
+sometimes persuade themselves that they are really pleased.&nbsp; William,
+as ever, shed no blood; he harmed none of the men who had become his
+subjects; but Le Mans was to be bridled; its citizens needed a castle
+and a Norman garrison to keep them in their new allegiance.&nbsp; Walter
+and Biota surrendered their claims on Maine and became William&rsquo;s
+guests at Falaise.&nbsp; Meanwhile Geoffrey of Mayenne refused to submit,
+and withstood the new Count of Maine in his stronghold.&nbsp; William
+laid siege to Mayenne, and took it by the favoured Norman argument of
+fire.&nbsp; All Maine was now in the hands of the Conqueror.</p>
+<p>William had now made a greater conquest than any Norman duke had
+made before him.&nbsp; He had won a county and a noble city, and he
+had won them, in the ideas of his own age, with honour.&nbsp; Are we
+to believe that he sullied his conquest by putting his late competitors,
+his present guests, to death by poison?&nbsp; They died conveniently
+for him, and they died in his own house.&nbsp; Such a death was strange;
+but strange things do happen.&nbsp; William gradually came to shrink
+from no crime for which he could find a technical defence; but no advocate
+could have said anything on behalf of the poisoning of Walter and Biota.&nbsp;
+Another member of the house of Maine, Margaret the betrothed of his
+son Robert, died about the same time; and her at least William had every
+motive to keep alive.&nbsp; One who was more dangerous than Walter,
+if he suffered anything, only suffered banishment.&nbsp; Of Geoffrey
+of Mayenne we hear no more till William had again to fight for the possession
+of Maine.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his power
+and fame as a continental prince.&nbsp; In a conquest on Gaulish soil
+he had rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to make
+beyond sea.&nbsp; Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventful
+in Normandy, still part us from William&rsquo;s second visit to our
+shores.&nbsp; But in the course of these three years one event must
+have happened, which, without a blow being struck or a treaty being
+signed, did more for his hopes than any battle or any treaty.&nbsp;
+At some unrecorded time, but at a time which must come within these
+years, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the guest and the man of
+William Duke of the Normans.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V&mdash;HAROLD&rsquo;S OATH TO WILLIAM&mdash;A.D. 1064?</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his chances
+of becoming lord of England also.&nbsp; While our authorities enable
+us to put together a fairly full account of both Norman and English
+events, they throw no light on the way in which men in either land looked
+at events in the other.&nbsp; Yet we might give much to know what William
+and Harold at this time thought of one another.&nbsp; Nothing had as
+yet happened to make the two great rivals either national or personal
+enemies.&nbsp; England and Normandy were at peace, and the great duke
+and the great earl had most likely had no personal dealings with one
+another.&nbsp; They were rivals in the sense that each looked forward
+to succeed to the English crown whenever the reigning king should die.&nbsp;
+But neither had as yet put forward his claim in any shape that the other
+could look on as any formal wrong to himself.&nbsp; If William and Harold
+had ever met, it could have been only during Harold&rsquo;s journey
+in Gaul.&nbsp; Whatever negotiations Harold made during that journey
+were negotiations unfriendly to William; still he may, in the course
+of that journey, have visited Normandy as well as France or Anjou.&nbsp;
+It is hard to avoid the thought that the tale of Harold&rsquo;s visit
+to William, of his oath to William, arose out of something that happened
+on Harold&rsquo;s way back from his Roman pilgrimage.&nbsp; To that
+journey we can give an approximate date.&nbsp; Of any other journey
+we have no date and no certain detail.&nbsp; We can say only that the
+fact that no English writer makes any mention of any such visit, of
+any such oath, is, under the circumstances, the strongest proof that
+the story of the visit and the oath has some kind of foundation.&nbsp;
+Yet if we grant thus much, the story reads on the whole as if it happened
+a few years later than the English earl&rsquo;s return from Rome.</p>
+<p>It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit to
+Gaul, whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some time nearer
+to Edward&rsquo;s death than the year 1058.&nbsp; The English writers
+are silent; the Norman writers give no date or impossible dates; they
+connect the visit with a war in Britanny; but that war is without a
+date.&nbsp; We are driven to choose the year which is least rich in
+events in the English annals.&nbsp; Harold could not have paid a visit
+of several months to Normandy either in 1063 or in 1065.&nbsp; Of those
+years the first was the year of Harold&rsquo;s great war in Wales, when
+he found how the Britons might be overcome by their own arms, when he
+broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the Welsh kingdom to princes
+who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of King Edward.&nbsp; Harold&rsquo;s
+visit to Normandy is said to have taken place in the summer and autumn
+mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065 were taken up by the building
+and destruction of Harold&rsquo;s hunting-seat in Wales and by the greater
+events of the revolt and pacification of Northumberland.&nbsp; But the
+year 1064 is a blank in the English annals till the last days of December,
+and no action of Harold&rsquo;s in that year is recorded.&nbsp; It is
+therefore the only possible year among those just before Edward&rsquo;s
+death.&nbsp; Harold&rsquo;s visit and oath to William may very well
+have taken place in that year; but that is all.</p>
+<p>We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visit
+or the nature of the oath.&nbsp; We can say only that Harold did something
+which enabled William to charge him with perjury and breach of the duty
+of a vassal.&nbsp; It is inconceivable in itself, and unlike the formal
+scrupulousness of William&rsquo;s character, to fancy that he made his
+appeal to all Christendom without any ground at all.&nbsp; The Norman
+writers contradict one another so thoroughly in every detail of the
+story that we can look on no part of it as trustworthy.&nbsp; Yet such
+a story can hardly have grown up so near to the alleged time without
+some kernel of truth in it.&nbsp; And herein comes the strong corroborative
+witness that the English writers, denying every other charge against
+Harold, pass this one by without notice.&nbsp; We can hardly doubt that
+Harold swore some oath to William which he did not keep.&nbsp; More
+than this it would be rash to say except as an avowed guess.</p>
+<p>As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that year which
+is not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, we can only
+take that one among the Norman versions which is also not impossible.&nbsp;
+All the main versions represent Harold as wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu,
+as imprisoned, according to the barbarous law of wreck, by Count Guy,
+and as delivered by the intervention of William.&nbsp; If any part of
+the story is true, this is.&nbsp; But as to the circumstances which
+led to the shipwreck there is no agreement.&nbsp; Harold assuredly was
+not sent to announce to William a devise of the crown in his favour
+made with the consent of the Witan of England and confirmed by the oaths
+of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, and Leofric.&nbsp; Stigand became Archbishop
+in September 1052: Godwine died at Easter 1053.&nbsp; The devise must
+therefore have taken place, and Harold&rsquo;s journey must have taken
+place, within those few most unlikely months, the very time when Norman
+influence was overthrown.&nbsp; Another version makes Harold go, against
+the King&rsquo;s warnings, to bring back his brother Wulfnoth and his
+nephew Hakon, who had been given as hostages on the return of Godwine,
+and had been entrusted by the King to the keeping of Duke William.&nbsp;
+This version is one degree less absurd; but no such hostages are known
+to have been given, and if they were, the patriotic party, in the full
+swing of triumph, would hardly have allowed them to be sent to Normandy.&nbsp;
+A third version makes Harold&rsquo;s presence the result of mere accident.&nbsp;
+He is sailing to Wales or Flanders, or simply taking his pleasure in
+the Channel, when he is cast by a storm on the coast of Ponthieu.&nbsp;
+Of these three accounts we may choose the third as the only one that
+is possible.&nbsp; It is also one out of which the others may have grown,
+while it is hard to see how the third could have arisen out of either
+of the others.&nbsp; Harold then, we may suppose, fell accidentally
+into the clutches of Guy, and was rescued from them, at some cost in
+ransom and in grants of land, by Guy&rsquo;s overlord Duke William.</p>
+<p>The whole story is eminently characteristic of William.&nbsp; He
+would be honestly indignant at Guy&rsquo;s base treatment of Harold,
+and he would feel it his part as Guy&rsquo;s overlord to redress the
+wrong.&nbsp; But he would also be alive to the advantage of getting
+his rival into his power on so honourable a pretext.&nbsp; Simply to
+establish a claim to gratitude on the part of Harold would be something.&nbsp;
+But he might easily do more, and, according to all accounts, he did
+more.&nbsp; Harold, we are told, as the Duke&rsquo;s friend and guest,
+returns the obligation under which the Duke has laid him by joining
+him in one or more expeditions against the Bretons.&nbsp; The man who
+had just smitten the Bret-Welsh of the island might well be asked to
+fight, and might well be ready to fight, against the Bret-Welsh of the
+mainland.&nbsp; The services of Harold won him high honour; he was admitted
+into the ranks of Norman knighthood, and engaged to marry one of William&rsquo;s
+daughters.&nbsp; Now, at any time to which we can fix Harold&rsquo;s
+visit, all William&rsquo;s daughters must have been mere children.&nbsp;
+Harold, on the other hand, seems to have been a little older than William.&nbsp;
+Yet there is nothing unlikely in the engagement, and it is the one point
+in which all the different versions, contradicting each other on every
+other point, agree without exception.&nbsp; Whatever else Harold promises,
+he promises this, and in some versions he does not promise anything
+else.</p>
+<p>Here then we surely have the kernel of truth round which a mass of
+fable, varying in different reports, has gathered.&nbsp; On no other
+point is there any agreement.&nbsp; The place is unfixed; half a dozen
+Norman towns and castles are made the scene of the oath.&nbsp; The form
+of the oath is unfixed; in some accounts it is the ordinary oath of
+homage; in others it is an oath of fearful solemnity, taken on the holiest
+relics.&nbsp; In one well-known account, Harold is even made to swear
+on hidden relics, not knowing on what he is swearing.&nbsp; Here is
+matter for much thought.&nbsp; To hold that one form of oath or promise
+is more binding than another upsets all true confidence between man
+and man.&nbsp; The notion of the specially binding nature of the oath
+by relies assumes that, in case of breach of the oath, every holy person
+to whose relies despite has been done will become the personal enemy
+of the perjurer.&nbsp; But the last story of all is the most instructive.&nbsp;
+William&rsquo;s formal, and more than formal, religion abhorred a false
+oath, in himself or in another man.&nbsp; But, so long as he keeps himself
+personally clear from the guilt, he does not scruple to put another
+man under special temptation, and, while believing in the power of the
+holy relics, he does not scruple to abuse them to a purpose of fraud.&nbsp;
+Surely, if Harold did break his oath, the wrath of the saints would
+fall more justly on William.&nbsp; Whether the tale be true or false,
+it equally illustrates the feelings of the time, and assuredly its truth
+or falsehood concerns the character of William far more than that of
+Harold.</p>
+<p>What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemn fashion
+or in any other, is left equally uncertain.&nbsp; In any case he engages
+to marry a daughter of William&mdash;as to which daughter the statements
+are endless&mdash;and in most versions he engages to do something more.&nbsp;
+He becomes the man of William, much as William had become the man of
+Edward.&nbsp; He promises to give his sister in marriage to an unnamed
+Norman baron.&nbsp; Moreover he promises to secure the kingdom of England
+for William at Edward&rsquo;s death.&nbsp; Perhaps he is himself to
+hold the kingdom or part of it under William; in any case William is
+to be the overlord; in the more usual story, William is to be himself
+the immediate king, with Harold as his highest and most favoured subject.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile Harold is to act in William&rsquo;s interest, to receive a
+Norman garrison in Dover castle, and to build other castles at other
+points.&nbsp; But no two stories agree, and not a few know nothing of
+anything beyond the promise of marriage.</p>
+<p>Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things,
+it must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him.&nbsp;
+If Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simply because
+he felt that he was practically in William&rsquo;s power, without any
+serious intention of keeping the oath.&nbsp; If Harold took any such
+oath, he undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilt
+on his part lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it.&nbsp;
+For he swore to do what he could not do, and what it would have been
+a crime to do, if he could.&nbsp; If the King himself could not dispose
+of the crown, still less could the most powerful subject.&nbsp; Harold
+could at most promise William his &ldquo;vote and interest,&rdquo; whenever
+the election came.&nbsp; But no one can believe that even Harold&rsquo;s
+influence could have obtained the crown for William.&nbsp; His influence
+lay in his being the embodiment of the national feeling; for him to
+appear as the supporter of William would have been to lose the crown
+for himself without gaining it for William.&nbsp; Others in England
+and in Scandinavia would have been glad of it.&nbsp; And the engagements
+to surrender Dover castle and the like were simply engagements on the
+part of an English earl to play the traitor against England.&nbsp; If
+William really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did so, not
+with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to put his competitor
+as far as possible in the wrong.&nbsp; But most likely Harold swore
+only to something much simpler.&nbsp; Next to the universal agreement
+about the marriage comes the very general agreement that Harold became
+William&rsquo;s man.&nbsp; In these two statements we have probably
+the whole truth.&nbsp; In those days men took the obligation of homage
+upon themselves very easily.&nbsp; Homage was no degradation, even in
+the highest; a man often did homage to any one from whom he had received
+any great benefit, and Harold had received a very great benefit from
+William.&nbsp; Nor did homage to a new lord imply treason to the old
+one.&nbsp; Harold, delivered by William from Guy&rsquo;s dungeon, would
+be eager to do for William any act of friendship.&nbsp; The homage would
+be little more than binding himself in the strongest form so to do.&nbsp;
+The relation of homage could be made to mean anything or nothing, as
+might be convenient.&nbsp; The man might often understand it in one
+sense and the lord in another.&nbsp; If Harold became the man of William,
+he would look on the act as little more than an expression of good will
+and gratitude towards his benefactor, his future father-in-law, his
+commander in the Breton war.&nbsp; He would not look on it as forbidding
+him to accept the English crown if it were offered to him.&nbsp; Harold,
+the man of Duke William, might become a king, if he could, just as William,
+the man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could.&nbsp; As things
+went in those days, both the homage and the promise of marriage were
+capable of being looked on very lightly.</p>
+<p>But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William to
+put any such easy meaning on either promise.&nbsp; The oath might, if
+needful, be construed very strictly, and William was disposed to construe
+it very strictly.&nbsp; Harold had not promised William a crown, which
+was not his to promise; but he had promised to do that which might be
+held to forbid him to take a crown which William held to be his own.&nbsp;
+If the man owed his lord any duty at all, it was surely his duty not
+to thwart his lord&rsquo;s wishes in such a matter.&nbsp; If therefore,
+when the vacancy of the throne came, Harold took the crown himself,
+or even failed to promote William&rsquo;s claim to it, William might
+argue that he had not rightly discharged the duty of a man to his lord.&nbsp;
+He could make an appeal to the world against the new king, as a perjured
+man, who had failed to help his lord in the matter where his lord most
+needed his help.&nbsp; And, if the oath really had been taken on relics
+of special holiness, he could further appeal to the religious feelings
+of the time against the man who had done despite to the saints.&nbsp;
+If he should be driven to claim the crown by arms, he could give the
+war the character of a crusade.&nbsp; All this in the end William did,
+and all this, we may be sure, he looked forward to doing, when he caused
+Harold to become his man.&nbsp; The mere obligation of homage would,
+in the skilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work
+on men&rsquo;s minds, as William wished to work on them.&nbsp; To Harold
+meanwhile and to those in England who heard the story, the engagement
+would not seem to carry any of these consequences.&nbsp; The mere homage
+then, which Harold could hardly refuse, would answer William&rsquo;s
+purpose nearly as well as any of these fuller obligations which Harold
+would surely have refused.&nbsp; And when a man older than William engaged
+to marry William&rsquo;s child-daughter, we must bear in mind the lightness
+with which such promises were made.&nbsp; William could not seriously
+expect that this engagement would be kept, if anything should lead Harold
+to another marriage.&nbsp; The promise was meant simply to add another
+count to the charges against Harold when the time should come.&nbsp;
+Yet on this point it is not clear that the oath was broken.&nbsp; Harold
+undoubtedly married Ealdgyth, daughter of &AElig;lfgar and widow of
+Gruffydd, and not any daughter of William.&nbsp; But in one version
+Harold is made to say that the daughter of William whom he had engaged
+to marry was dead.&nbsp; And that one of William&rsquo;s daughters did
+die very early there seems little doubt.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan.&nbsp;
+The Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtler still.&nbsp;
+In this long series of schemes and negotiations which led to the conquest
+of England, we are dealing with two of the greatest recorded masters
+of statecraft.&nbsp; We may call their policy dishonest and immoral,
+and so it was.&nbsp; But it was hardly more dishonest and immoral than
+most of the diplomacy of later times.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s object was,
+without any formal breach of faith on his own part, to entrap Harold
+into an engagement which might be understood in different senses, and
+which, in the sense which William chose to put upon it, Harold was sure
+to break.&nbsp; Two men, themselves of virtuous life, a rigid churchman
+and a layman of unusual religious strictness, do not scruple to throw
+temptation in the way of a fellow man in the hope that he will yield
+to that temptation.&nbsp; They exact a promise, because the promise
+is likely to be broken, and because its breach would suit their purposes.&nbsp;
+Through all William&rsquo;s policy a strong regard for formal right
+as he chose to understand formal right, is not only found in company
+with much practical wrong, but is made the direct instrument of carrying
+out that wrong.&nbsp; Never was trap more cunningly laid than that in
+which William now entangled Harold.&nbsp; Never was greater wrong done
+without the breach of any formal precept of right.&nbsp; William and
+Lanfranc broke no oath themselves, and that was enough for them.&nbsp;
+But it was no sin in their eyes to beguile another into engagements
+which he would understand in one way and they in another; they even,
+as their admirers tell the story, beguile him into engagements at once
+unlawful and impossible, because their interests would be promoted by
+his breach of those engagements.&nbsp; William, in short, under the
+spiritual guidance of Lanfranc, made Harold swear because he himself
+would gain by being able to denounce Harold as perjured.</p>
+<p>The moral question need not be further discussed; but we should greatly
+like to know how far the fact of Harold&rsquo;s oath, whatever its nature,
+was known in England?&nbsp; On this point we have no trustworthy authority.&nbsp;
+The English writers say nothing about the whole matter; to the Norman
+writers this point was of no interest.&nbsp; No one mentions this point,
+except Harold&rsquo;s romantic biographer at the beginning of the thirteenth
+century.&nbsp; His statements are of no value, except as showing how
+long Harold&rsquo;s memory was cherished.&nbsp; According to him, Harold
+formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they unanimously voted
+that the oath&mdash;more, in his version, than a mere oath of homage&mdash;was
+not binding.&nbsp; It is not likely that such a vote was ever formally
+passed, but its terms would only express what every Englishman would
+feel.&nbsp; The oath, whatever its terms, had given William a great
+advantage; but every Englishman would argue both that the oath, whatever
+its terms, could not hinder the English nation from offering Harold
+the crown, and that it could not bind Harold to refuse the crown if
+it should be so offered.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM&mdash;JANUARY-OCTOBER
+1066</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>If the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold&rsquo;s
+oath to William, its fulfilment became a practical question in little
+more than a year.&nbsp; How the year 1065 passed in Normandy we have
+no record; in England its later months saw the revolt of Northumberland
+against Harold&rsquo;s brother Tostig, and the reconciliation which
+Harold made between the revolters and the king to the damage of his
+brother&rsquo;s interests.&nbsp; Then came Edward&rsquo;s sickness,
+of which he died on January 5, 1066.&nbsp; He had on his deathbed recommended
+Harold to the assembled Witan as his successor in the kingdom.&nbsp;
+The candidate was at once elected.&nbsp; Whether William, Edgar, or
+any other, was spoken of we know not; but as to the recommendation of
+Edward and the consequent election of Harold the English writers are
+express.&nbsp; The next day Edward was buried, and Harold was crowned
+in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop of York in Edward&rsquo;s new
+church at Westminster.&nbsp; Northumberland refused to acknowledge him;
+but the malcontents were won over by the coming of the king and his
+friend Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester.&nbsp; It was most likely
+now, as a seal of this reconciliation, that Harold married Ealdgyth,
+the sister of the two northern earls Edwin and Morkere, and the widow
+of the Welsh king Gruffydd.&nbsp; He doubtless hoped in this way to
+win the loyalty of the earls and their followers.</p>
+<p>The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to English
+law.&nbsp; In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writers
+of the time do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election, and
+coronation.&nbsp; They slur them over, or, while admitting the mere
+facts, they represent each act as in some way invalid.&nbsp; No writer
+near the time asserts a deathbed nomination of William; they speak only
+of a nomination at some earlier time.&nbsp; But some Norman writers
+represent Harold as crowned by Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury.&nbsp;
+This was not, in the ideas of those times, a trifling question.&nbsp;
+A coronation was then not a mere pageant; it was the actual admission
+to the kingly office.&nbsp; Till his crowning and anointing, the claimant
+of the crown was like a bishop-elect before his consecration.&nbsp;
+He had, by birth or election, the sole right to become king; it was
+the coronation that made him king.&nbsp; And as the ceremony took the
+form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validity might seem to depend
+on the lawful position of the officiating bishop.&nbsp; In England to
+perform that ceremony was the right and duty of the Archbishop of Canterbury;
+but the canonical position of Stigand was doubtful.&nbsp; He had been
+appointed on the flight of Robert; he had received the <i>pallium</i>,
+the badge of arch-episcopal rank, only from the usurping Benedict the
+Tenth.&nbsp; It was therefore good policy in Harold to be crowned by
+Ealdred, to whose position there was no objection.&nbsp; This is the
+only difference of fact between the English and Norman versions at this
+stage.&nbsp; And the difference is easily explained.&nbsp; At William&rsquo;s
+coronation the king walked to the altar between the two archbishops,
+but it was Ealdred who actually performed the ceremony.&nbsp; Harold&rsquo;s
+coronation doubtless followed the same order.&nbsp; But if Stigand took
+any part in that coronation, it was easy to give out that he took that
+special part on which the validity of the rite depended.</p>
+<p>Still, if Harold&rsquo;s accession was perfectly lawful, it was none
+the less strange and unusual.&nbsp; Except the Danish kings chosen under
+more or less of compulsion, he was the first king who did not belong
+to the West-Saxon kingly house.&nbsp; Such a choice could be justified
+only on the ground that that house contained no qualified candidate.&nbsp;
+Its only known members were the children of the &AElig;theling Edward,
+young Edgar and his sisters.&nbsp; Now Edgar would certainly have been
+passed by in favour of any better qualified member of the kingly house,
+as his father had been passed by in favour of King Edward.&nbsp; And
+the same principle would, as things stood, justify passing him by in
+favour of a qualified candidate not of the kingly house.&nbsp; But Edgar&rsquo;s
+right to the crown is never spoken of till a generation or two later,
+when the doctrines of hereditary right had gained much greater strength,
+and when Henry the Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar&rsquo;s
+sister Margaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings.&nbsp; This
+distinction is important, because Harold is often called an usurper,
+as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth.&nbsp; But those who called him
+an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out William the heir
+by bequest.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s own election was out of the question.&nbsp;
+He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold; he was a foreigner
+and an utter stranger.&nbsp; Had Englishmen been minded to choose a
+foreigner, they doubtless would have chosen Swegen of Denmark.&nbsp;
+He had found supporters when Edward was chosen; he was afterwards appealed
+to to deliver England from William.&nbsp; He was no more of the English
+kingly house than Harold or William; but he was grandson of a man who
+had reigned over England, Northumberland might have preferred him to
+Harold; any part of England would have preferred him to William.&nbsp;
+In fact any choice that could have been made must have had something
+strange about it.&nbsp; Edgar himself, the one surviving male of the
+old stock, besides his youth, was neither born in the land nor the son
+of a crowned king.&nbsp; Those two qualifications had always been deemed
+of great moment; an elaborate pedigree went for little; actual royal
+birth went for a great deal.&nbsp; There was now no son of a king to
+choose.&nbsp; Had there been even a child who was at once a son of Edward
+and a sister&rsquo;s son of Harold, he might have reigned with his uncle
+as his guardian and counsellor.&nbsp; As it was, there was nothing to
+do but to choose the man who, though not of kingly blood, had ruled
+England well for thirteen years.</p>
+<p>The case thus put seemed plain to every Englishman, at all events
+to every man in Wessex, East-Anglia, and southern Mercia.&nbsp; But
+it would not seem so plain in <i>other</i> lands.&nbsp; To the greater
+part of Western Europe William&rsquo;s claim might really seem the better.&nbsp;
+William himself doubtless thought his own claim the better; he deluded
+himself as he deluded others.&nbsp; But we are more concerned with William
+as a statesman; and if it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever
+the ends may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe that the
+worse cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher statesmanship
+than William showed in his great pleading before all Western Christendom.&nbsp;
+It is a sign of the times that it was a pleading before all Western
+Christendom.&nbsp; Others had claimed crowns; none had taken such pains
+to convince all mankind that the claim was a good one.&nbsp; Such an
+appeal to public opinion marks on one side a great advance.&nbsp; It
+was a great step towards the ideas of International Law and even of
+European concert.&nbsp; It showed that the days of mere force were over,
+that the days of subtle diplomacy had begun.&nbsp; Possibly the change
+was not without its dark side; it may be doubted whether a change from
+force to fraud is wholly a gain.&nbsp; Still it was an appeal from the
+mere argument of the sword to something which at least professed to
+be right and reason.&nbsp; William does not draw the sword till he has
+convinced himself and everybody else that he is drawing it in a just
+cause.&nbsp; In that age the appeal naturally took a religious shape.&nbsp;
+Herein lay its immediate strength; herein lay its weakness as regarded
+the times to come.&nbsp; William appealed to Emperor, kings, princes,
+Christian men great and small, in every Christian land.&nbsp; He would
+persuade all; he would ask help of all.&nbsp; But above all he appealed
+to the head of Christendom, the Bishop of Rome.&nbsp; William in his
+own person could afford to do so; where he reigned, in Normandy or in
+England, there was no fear of Roman encroachments; he was fully minded
+to be in all causes and over all persons within his dominions supreme.&nbsp;
+While he lived, no Pope ventured to dispute his right.&nbsp; But by
+acknowledging the right of the Pope to dispose of crowns, or at least
+to judge as to the right to crowns, he prepared many days of humiliation
+for kings in general and specially for his own successors.&nbsp; One
+man in Western Europe could see further than William, perhaps even further
+than Lanfranc.&nbsp; The chief counsellor of Pope Alexander the Second
+was the Archdeacon Hildebrand, the future Gregory the Seventh.&nbsp;
+If William outwitted the world, Hildebrand outwitted William.&nbsp;
+William&rsquo;s appeal to the Pope to decide between two claimants for
+the English crown strengthened Gregory not a little in his daring claim
+to dispose of the crowns of Rome, of Italy, and of Germany.&nbsp; Still
+this recognition of Roman claims led more directly to the humiliation
+of William&rsquo;s successor in his own kingdom.&nbsp; Moreover William&rsquo;s
+successful attempt to represent his enterprise as a holy war, a crusade
+before crusades were heard of, did much to suggest and to make ready
+the way for the real crusades a generation later.&nbsp; It was not till
+after William&rsquo;s death that Urban preached the crusade, but it
+was during William&rsquo;s life that Gregory planned it.</p>
+<p>The appeal was strangely successful.&nbsp; William convinced, or
+seemed to convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his
+claim to the English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good
+work to help him to assert it in arms.&nbsp; He persuaded his own subjects;
+he certainly did not constrain them.&nbsp; He persuaded some foreign
+princes to give him actual help, some to join his muster in person;
+he persuaded all to help him so far as not to hinder their subjects
+from joining him as volunteers.&nbsp; And all this was done by sheer
+persuasion, by argument good or bad.&nbsp; In adapting of means to ends,
+in applying to each class of men that kind of argument which best suited
+it, the diplomacy, the statesmanship, of William was perfect.&nbsp;
+Again we ask, How far was it the statesmanship of William, how far of
+Lanfranc?&nbsp; But a prince need not do everything with his own hands
+and say everything with his own tongue.&nbsp; It was no small part of
+the statesmanship of William to find out Lanfranc, to appreciate him
+and to trust him.&nbsp; And when two subtle brains were at work, more
+could be done by the two working in partnership than by either working
+alone.</p>
+<p>By what arguments did the Duke of the Normans and the Prior of Bec
+convince mankind that the worse cause was the better?&nbsp; We must
+always remember the transitional character of the age.&nbsp; England
+was in political matters in advance of other Western lands; that is,
+it lagged behind other Western lands.&nbsp; It had not gone so far on
+the downward course.&nbsp; It kept far more than Gaul or even Germany
+of the old Teutonic institutions, the substance of which later ages
+have won back under new shapes.&nbsp; Many things were understood in
+England which are now again understood everywhere, but which were no
+longer understood in France or in the lands held of the French crown.&nbsp;
+The popular election of kings comes foremost.&nbsp; Hugh Capet was an
+elective king as much as Harold; but the French kings had made their
+crown the most strictly hereditary of all crowns.&nbsp; They avoided
+any interregnum by having their sons crowned in their lifetime.&nbsp;
+So with the great fiefs of the crown.&nbsp; The notion of kingship as
+an office conferred by the nation, of a duchy or county as an office
+held under the king, was still fully alive in England; in Gaul it was
+forgotten.&nbsp; Kingdom, duchies, counties, had all become possessions
+instead of offices, possessions passing by hereditary succession of
+some kind.&nbsp; But no rule of hereditary succession was universally
+or generally accepted.&nbsp; To this day the kingdoms of Europe differ
+as to the question of female succession, and it is but slowly that the
+doctrine of representation has ousted the more obvious doctrine of nearness
+of kin.&nbsp; All these points were then utterly unsettled; crowns,
+save of course that of the Empire, were to pass by hereditary right;
+only what was hereditary right?&nbsp; At such a time claims would be
+pressed which would have seemed absurd either earlier or later.&nbsp;
+To Englishmen, if it seemed strange to elect one who was not of the
+stock of Cerdic, it seemed much more strange to be called on to accept
+without election, or to elect as a matter of course, one who was not
+of the stock of Cerdic and who was a stranger into the bargain.&nbsp;
+Out of England it would not seem strange when William set forth that
+Edward, having no direct heirs, had chosen his near kinsman William
+as his successor.&nbsp; Put by itself, that statement had a plausible
+sound.&nbsp; The transmission of a crown by bequest belongs to the same
+range of ideas as its transmission by hereditary right; both assume
+the crown to be a property and not an office.&nbsp; Edward&rsquo;s nomination
+of Harold, the election of Harold, the fact that William&rsquo;s kindred
+to Edward lay outside the royal line of England, the fact that there
+was, in the person of Edgar, a nearer kinsman within that royal line,
+could all be slurred over or explained away or even turned to William&rsquo;s
+profit.&nbsp; Let it be that Edward on his death-bed had recommended
+Harold, and that the Witan had elected Harold.&nbsp; The recommendation
+was wrung from a dying man in opposition to an earlier act done when
+he was able to act freely.&nbsp; The election was brought about by force
+or fraud; if it was free, it was of no force against William&rsquo;s
+earlier claim of kindred and bequest.&nbsp; As for Edgar, as few people
+in England thought of him, still fewer out of England would have ever
+heard of him.&nbsp; It is more strange that the bastardy of William
+did not tell against him, as it had once told in his own duchy.&nbsp;
+But this fact again marks the transitional age.&nbsp; Altogether the
+tale that a man who was no kinsman of the late king had taken to himself
+the crown which the king had bequeathed to a kinsman, might, even without
+further aggravation, be easily made to sound like a tale of wrong.</p>
+<p>But the case gained tenfold strength when William added that the
+doer of the wrong was of all men the one most specially bound not to
+do it.&nbsp; The usurper was in any case William&rsquo;s man, bound
+to act in all things for his lord.&nbsp; Perhaps he was more; perhaps
+he had directly sworn to receive William as king.&nbsp; Perhaps he had
+promised all this with an oath of special solemnity.&nbsp; It would
+be easy to enlarge on all these further counts as making up an amount
+of guilt which William not only had the right to chastise, but which
+he would be lacking in duty if he failed to chastise.&nbsp; He had to
+punish the perjurer, to avenge the wrongs of the saints.&nbsp; Surely
+all who should help him in so doing would be helping in a righteous
+work.</p>
+<p>The answer to all this was obvious.&nbsp; Putting the case at the
+very worst, assuming that Harold had sworn all that he is ever said
+to have sworn, assuming that he swore it in the most solemn way in which
+he is ever said to have sworn it, William&rsquo;s claim was not thereby
+made one whit better.&nbsp; Whatever Harold&rsquo;s own guilt might
+be, the people of England had no share in it.&nbsp; Nothing that Harold
+had done could bar their right to choose their king freely.&nbsp; Even
+if Harold declined the crown, that would not bind the electors to choose
+William.&nbsp; But when the notion of choosing kings had begun to sound
+strange, all this would go for nothing.&nbsp; There would be no need
+even to urge that in any case the wrong done by Harold to William gave
+William a <i>casus belli</i> against Harold, and that William, if victorious,
+might claim the crown of England, as a possession of Harold&rsquo;s,
+by right of conquest.&nbsp; In fact William never claimed the crown
+by conquest, as conquest is commonly understood.&nbsp; He always represented
+himself as the lawful heir, unhappily driven to use force to obtain
+his rights.&nbsp; The other pleas were quite enough to satisfy most
+men out of England and Scandinavia.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s work was to
+claim the crown of which he was unjustly deprived, and withal to deal
+out a righteous chastisement on the unrighteous and ungodly man by whom
+he had been deprived of it.</p>
+<p>In the hands of diplomatists like William and Lanfranc, all these
+arguments, none of which had in itself the slightest strength, were
+enough to turn the great mass of continental opinion in William&rsquo;s
+favour.&nbsp; But he could add further arguments specially adapted to
+different classes of minds.&nbsp; He could hold out the prospect of
+plunder, the prospect of lands and honours in a land whose wealth was
+already proverbial.&nbsp; It might of course be answered that the enterprise
+against England was hazardous and its success unlikely.&nbsp; But in
+such matters, men listen rather to their hopes than to their fears.&nbsp;
+To the Normans it would be easy, not only to make out a case against
+Harold, but to rake up old grudges against the English nation.&nbsp;
+Under Harold the son of Cnut, Alfred, a prince half Norman by birth,
+wholly Norman by education, the brother of the late king, the lawful
+heir to the crown, had been betrayed and murdered by somebody.&nbsp;
+A widespread belief laid the deed to the charge of the father of the
+new king.&nbsp; This story might easily be made a ground of national
+complaint by Normandy against England, and it was easy to infer that
+Harold had some share in the alleged crime of Godwine.&nbsp; It was
+easy to dwell on later events, on the driving of so many Normans out
+of England, with Archbishop Robert at their head.&nbsp; Nay, not only
+had the lawful primate been driven out, but an usurper had been set
+in his place, and this usurping archbishop had been made to bestow a
+mockery of consecration on the usurping king.&nbsp; The proposed aggression
+on England was even represented as a missionary work, undertaken for
+the good of the souls of the benighted islanders.&nbsp; For, though
+the English were undoubtedly devout after their own fashion, there was
+much in the ecclesiastical state of England which displeased strict
+churchmen beyond sea, much that William, when he had the power, deemed
+it his duty to reform.&nbsp; The insular position of England naturally
+parted it in many things from the usages and feelings of the mainland,
+and it was not hard to get up a feeling against the nation as well as
+against its king.&nbsp; All this could not really strengthen William&rsquo;s
+claim; but it made men look more favourably on his enterprise.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The fact that the Witan were actually in session at Edward&rsquo;s
+death had made it possible to carry out Harold&rsquo;s election and
+coronation with extreme speed.&nbsp; The electors had made their choice
+before William had any opportunity of formally laying his claim before
+them.&nbsp; This was really an advantage to him; he could the better
+represent the election and coronation as invalid.&nbsp; His first step
+was of course to send an embassy to Harold to call on him even now to
+fulfil his oath.&nbsp; The accounts of this embassy, of which we have
+no English account, differ as much as the different accounts of the
+oath.&nbsp; Each version of course makes William demand and Harold refuse
+whatever it had made Harold swear.&nbsp; These demands and refusals
+range from the resignation of the kingdom to a marriage with William&rsquo;s
+daughter.&nbsp; And it is hard to separate this embassy from later messages
+between the rivals.&nbsp; In all William demands, Harold refuses; the
+arguments on each side are likely to be genuine.&nbsp; Harold is called
+on to give up the crown to William, to hold it of William, to hold part
+of the kingdom of William, to submit the question to the judgement of
+the Pope, lastly, if he will do nothing else, at least to marry William&rsquo;s
+daughter.&nbsp; Different writers place these demands at different times,
+immediately after Harold&rsquo;s election or immediately before the
+battle.&nbsp; The last challenge to a single combat between Harold and
+William of course appears only on the eve of the battle.&nbsp; Now none
+of these accounts come from contemporary partisans of Harold; every
+one is touched by hostile feeling towards him.&nbsp; Thus the constitutional
+language that is put into his mouth, almost startling from its modern
+sound, has greater value.&nbsp; A King of the English can do nothing
+without the consent of his Witan.&nbsp; They gave him the kingdom; without
+their consent, he cannot resign it or dismember it or agree to hold
+it of any man; without their consent, he cannot even marry a foreign
+wife.&nbsp; Or he answers that the daughter of William whom he promised
+to marry is dead, and that the sister whom he promised to give to a
+Norman is dead also.&nbsp; Harold does not deny the fact of his oath&mdash;whatever
+its nature; he justifies its breach because it was taken against is
+will, and because it was in itself of no strength, as binding him to
+do impossible things.&nbsp; He does not deny Edward&rsquo;s earlier
+promise to William; but, as a testament is of no force while the testator
+liveth, he argues that it is cancelled by Edward&rsquo;s later nomination
+of himself.&nbsp; In truth there is hardly any difference between the
+disputants as to matters of fact.&nbsp; One side admits at least a plighting
+of homage on the part of Harold; the other side admits Harold&rsquo;s
+nomination and election.&nbsp; The real difference is as to the legal
+effect of either.&nbsp; Herein comes William&rsquo;s policy.&nbsp; The
+question was one of English law and of nothing else, a matter for the
+Witan of England and for no other judges.&nbsp; William, by ingeniously
+mixing all kinds of irrelevant issues, contrived to remove the dispute
+from the region of municipal into that of international law, a law whose
+chief representative was the Bishop of Rome.&nbsp; By winning the Pope
+to his side, William could give his aggression the air of a religious
+war; but in so doing, he unwittingly undermined the throne that he was
+seeking and the thrones of all other princes.</p>
+<p>The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his time
+thought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment in our
+constitutional history.&nbsp; The King is the doer of everything; but
+he can do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan.&nbsp;
+They can say Yea or Nay to every proposal of the King.&nbsp; An energetic
+and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whatever he chose to
+ask.&nbsp; A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was in great
+danger of losing his kingdom.&nbsp; The statesmanship of William knew
+how to turn this constitutional system, without making any change in
+the letter, into a despotism like that of Constantinople or Cordova.&nbsp;
+But the letter lived, to come to light again on occasion.&nbsp; The
+Revolution of 1399 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1066, and
+the Revolution of 1688 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1399.&nbsp;
+The principle at all three periods is that the power of the King is
+strictly limited by law, but that, within the limits which the law sets
+to his power, he acts according to his own discretion.&nbsp; King and
+Witan stand out as distinct powers, each of which needs the assent of
+the other to its acts, and which may always refuse that assent.&nbsp;
+The political work of the last two hundred years has been to hinder
+these direct collisions between King and Parliament by the ingenious
+conventional device of a body of men who shall be in name the ministers
+of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House of Parliament.&nbsp;
+We do not understand our own political history, still less can we understand
+the position and the statesmanship of the Conqueror, unless we fully
+take in what the English constitution in the eleventh century really
+was, how very modern-sounding are some of its doctrines, some of its
+forms.&nbsp; Statesmen of our own day might do well to study the meagre
+records of the Gem&oacute;t of 1047.&nbsp; There is the earliest recorded
+instance of a debate on a question of foreign policy.&nbsp; Earl Godwine
+proposes to give help to Denmark, then at war with Norway.&nbsp; He
+is outvoted on the motion of Earl Leofric, the man of moderate politics,
+who appears as leader of the party of non-intervention.&nbsp; It may
+be that in some things we have not always advanced in the space of eight
+hundred years.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreign powers,
+and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order.&nbsp; Several negotiations
+were doubtless going on at the same time.&nbsp; The embassy to Harold
+would of course come first of all.&nbsp; Till his demand had been made
+and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere.&nbsp; We know not
+whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold&rsquo;s journey
+to Northumberland, before or after his marriage with Ealdgyth.&nbsp;
+If Harold was already married, the demand that he should marry William&rsquo;s
+daughter could have been meant only in mockery.&nbsp; Indeed, the whole
+embassy was so far meant in mockery that it was sent without any expectation
+that its demands would be listened to.&nbsp; It was sent to put Harold,
+from William&rsquo;s point of view, more thoroughly in the wrong, and
+to strengthen William&rsquo;s case against him.&nbsp; It would therefore
+be sent at the first moment; the only statement, from a very poor authority
+certainly, makes the embassy come on the tenth day after Edward&rsquo;s
+death.&nbsp; Next after the embassy would come William&rsquo;s appeal
+to his own subjects, though Lanfranc might well be pleading at Rome
+while William was pleading at Lillebonne.&nbsp; The Duke first consulted
+a select company, who promised their own services, but declined to pledge
+any one else.&nbsp; It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the
+Duke in an attempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea.&nbsp;
+But voluntary help was soon ready.&nbsp; A meeting of the whole baronage
+of Normandy was held at Lillebonne.&nbsp; The assembly declined any
+obligation which could be turned into a precedent, and passed no general
+vote at all.&nbsp; But the barons were won over one by one, and each
+promised help in men and ships according to his means.</p>
+<p>William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of his
+own subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealous support.&nbsp;
+And as the flame spread from one part of Europe to another, the zeal
+of Normandy would wax keener and keener.&nbsp; The dealings of William
+with foreign powers are told us in a confused, piecemeal, and sometimes
+contradictory way.&nbsp; We hear that embassies went to the young King
+Henry of Germany, son of the great Emperor, the friend of England, and
+also to Swegen of Denmark.&nbsp; The Norman story runs that both princes
+promised William their active support.&nbsp; Yet Swegen, the near kinsman
+of Harold, was a friend of England, and the same writer who puts this
+promise into his mouth makes him send troops to help his English cousin.&nbsp;
+Young Henry or his advisers could have no motive for helping William;
+but subjects of the Empire were at least not hindered from joining his
+banner.&nbsp; To the French king William perhaps offered the bait of
+holding the crown of England of him; but Philip is said to have discouraged
+William&rsquo;s enterprise as much as he could.&nbsp; Still he did not
+hinder French subjects from taking a part in it.&nbsp; Of the princes
+who held of the French crown, Eustace of Boulogne, who joined the muster
+in person, and Guy of Ponthieu, William&rsquo;s own vassal, who sent
+his son, seem to have been the only ones who did more than allow the
+levying of volunteers in their dominions.&nbsp; A strange tale is told
+that Conan of Britanny took this moment for bringing up his own forgotten
+pretensions to the Norman duchy.&nbsp; If William was going to win England,
+let him give up Normandy to him.&nbsp; He presently, the tale goes,
+died of a strange form of poisoning, in which it is implied that William
+had a hand.&nbsp; This is the story of Walter and Biota over again.&nbsp;
+It is perhaps enough to say that the Breton writers know nothing of
+the tale.</p>
+<p>But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court.&nbsp;
+We might have thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so well skilled
+in Roman ways; but William perhaps needed him as a constant adviser
+by his own person.&nbsp; Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, was sent to
+Pope Alexander.&nbsp; No application could better suit papal interests
+than the one that was now made; but there were some moral difficulties.&nbsp;
+Not a few of the cardinals, Hildebrand tells us himself, argued, not
+without strong language towards Hildebrand, that the Church had nothing
+to do with such matters, and that it was sinful to encourage a claim
+which could not be enforced without bloodshed.&nbsp; But with many,
+with Hildebrand among them, the notion of the Church as a party or a
+power came before all thoughts of its higher duties.&nbsp; One side
+was carefully heard; the other seems not to have been heard at all.&nbsp;
+We hear of no summons to Harold, and the King of the English could not
+have pleaded at the Pope&rsquo;s bar without acknowledging that his
+case was at least doubtful.&nbsp; The judgement of Alexander or of Hildebrand
+was given for William.&nbsp; Harold was declared to be an usurper, perhaps
+declared excommunicated.&nbsp; The right to the English crown was declared
+to be in the Duke of the Normans, and William was solemnly blessed in
+the enterprise in which he was at once to win his own rights, to chastise
+the wrong-doer, to reform the spiritual state of the misguided islanders,
+to teach them fuller obedience to the Roman See and more regular payment
+of its temporal dues.&nbsp; William gained his immediate point; but
+his successors on the English throne paid the penalty.&nbsp; Hildebrand
+gained his point for ever, or for as long a time as men might be willing
+to accept the Bishop of Rome as a judge in any matters.&nbsp; The precedent
+by which Hildebrand, under another name, took on him to dispose of a
+higher crown than that of England was now fully established.</p>
+<p>As an outward sign of papal favour, William received a consecrated
+banner and a ring containing a hair of Saint Peter.&nbsp; Here was something
+for men to fight for.&nbsp; The war was now a holy one.&nbsp; All who
+were ready to promote their souls&rsquo; health by slaughter and plunder
+might flock to William&rsquo;s standard, to the standard of Saint Peter.&nbsp;
+Men came from most French-speaking lands, the Normans of Apulia and
+Sicily being of course not slow to take up the quarrel of their kinsfolk.&nbsp;
+But, next to his own Normandy, the lands which sent most help were Flanders,
+the land of Matilda, and Britanny, where the name of the Saxon might
+still be hateful.&nbsp; We must never forget that the host of William,
+the men who won England, the men who settled in England, were not an
+exclusively Norman body.&nbsp; Not Norman, but <i>French</i>, is the
+name most commonly opposed to <i>English</i>, as the name of the conquering
+people.&nbsp; Each Norman severally would have scorned that name for
+himself personally; but it was the only name that could mark the whole
+of which he and his countrymen formed a part.&nbsp; Yet, if the Normans
+were but a part, they were the greatest and the noblest part; their
+presence alone redeemed the enterprise from being a simple enterprise
+of brigandage.&nbsp; The Norman Conquest was after all a Norman Conquest;
+men of other lands were merely helpers.&nbsp; So far as it was not Norman,
+it was Italian; the subtle wit of Lombard Lanfranc and Tuscan Hildebrand
+did as much to overthrow us as the lance and bow of Normandy.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII&mdash;WILLIAM&rsquo;S INVASION OF ENGLAND&mdash;AUGUST-DECEMBER
+1066</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The statesmanship of William had triumphed.&nbsp; The people of England
+had chosen their king, and a large part of the world had been won over
+by the arts of a foreign prince to believe that it was a righteous and
+holy work to set him on the throne to which the English people had chosen
+the foremost man among themselves.&nbsp; No diplomatic success was ever
+more thorough.&nbsp; Unluckily we know nothing of the state of feeling
+in England while William was plotting and pleading beyond the sea.&nbsp;
+Nor do we know how much men in England knew of what was going on in
+other lands, or what they thought when they heard of it.&nbsp; We know
+only that, after Harold had won over Northumberland, he came back and
+held the Easter Gem&oacute;t at Westminster.&nbsp; Then in the words
+of the Chronicler, &ldquo;it was known to him that William Bastard,
+King Edward&rsquo;s kinsman, would come hither and win this land.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This is all that our own writers tell us about William Bastard, between
+his peaceful visit to England in 1052 and his warlike visit in 1066.&nbsp;
+But we know that King Harold did all that man could do to defeat his
+purposes, and that he was therein loyally supported by the great mass
+of the English nation, we may safely say by all, save his two brothers-in-law
+and so many as they could influence.</p>
+<p>William&rsquo;s doings we know more fully.&nbsp; The military events
+of this wonderful year there is no need to tell in detail.&nbsp; But
+we see that William&rsquo;s generalship was equal to his statesmanship,
+and that it was met by equal generalship on the side of Harold.&nbsp;
+Moreover, the luck of William is as clear as either his statesmanship
+or his generalship.&nbsp; When Harold was crowned on the day of the
+Epiphany, he must have felt sure that he would have to withstand an
+invasion of England before the year was out.&nbsp; But it could not
+have come into the mind of Harold, William, or Lanfranc, or any other
+man, that he would have to withstand two invasions of England at the
+same moment.</p>
+<p>It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as the
+invasion of William, which decided the fate of England.&nbsp; The issue
+of the struggle might have gone against England, had she had to strive
+against one enemy only; as it was, it was the attack made by two enemies
+at once which divided her strength, and enabled the Normans to land
+without resistance.&nbsp; The two invasions came as nearly as possible
+at the same moment.&nbsp; Harold Hardrada can hardly have reached the
+Yorkshire coast before September; the battle of Fulford was fought on
+September 20th and that of Stamfordbridge on September 25th.&nbsp; William
+landed on September 28th, and the battle of Senlac was fought on October
+14th.&nbsp; Moreover William&rsquo;s fleet was ready by August 12th;
+his delay in crossing was owing to his waiting for a favourable wind.&nbsp;
+When William landed, the event of the struggle in the North could not
+have been known in Sussex.&nbsp; He might have had to strive, not with
+Harold of England, but with Harold of Norway as his conqueror.</p>
+<p>At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his invasion
+of England is quite uncertain.&nbsp; We can say nothing of his doings
+till he is actually afloat.&nbsp; And with the three mighty forms of
+William and the two Harolds on the scene, there is something at once
+grotesque and perplexing in the way in which an English traitor flits
+about among them.&nbsp; The banished Tostig, deprived of his earldom
+in the autumn of 1065, had then taken refuge in Flanders.&nbsp; He now
+plays a busy part, the details of which are lost in contradictory accounts.&nbsp;
+But it is certain that in May 1066 he made an ineffectual attack on
+England.&nbsp; And this attack was most likely made with the connivance
+of William.&nbsp; It suited William to use Tostig as an instrument,
+and to encourage so restless a spirit in annoying the common enemy.&nbsp;
+It is also certain that Tostig was with the Norwegian fleet in September,
+and that he died at Stamfordbridge.&nbsp; We know also that he was in
+Scotland between May and September.&nbsp; It is therefore hard to believe
+that Tostig had so great a hand in stirring up Harold Hardrada to his
+expedition as the Norwegian story makes out.&nbsp; Most likely Tostig
+simply joined the expedition which Harold Hardrada independently planned.&nbsp;
+One thing is certain, that, when Harold of England was attacked by two
+enemies at once, it was not by two enemies acting in concert.&nbsp;
+The interests of William and of Harold of Norway were as much opposed
+to one another as either of them was to the interests of Harold of England.</p>
+<p>One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike.&nbsp; Either
+in Normandy or in England it was easy to get together an army ready
+to fight a battle; it was not easy to keep a large body of men under
+arms for any long time without fighting.&nbsp; It was still harder to
+keep them at once without fighting and without plundering.&nbsp; What
+William had done in this way in two invasions of Normandy, he was now
+called on to do on a greater scale.&nbsp; His great and motley army
+was kept during a great part of August and September, first at the Dive,
+then at Saint Valery, waiting for the wind that was to take it to England.&nbsp;
+And it was kept without doing any serious damage to the lands where
+they were encamped.&nbsp; In a holy war, this time was of course largely
+spent in appeals to the religious feelings of the army.&nbsp; Then came
+the wonderful luck of William, which enabled him to cross at the particular
+moment when he did cross.&nbsp; A little earlier or later, he would
+have found his landing stoutly disputed; as it was, he landed without
+resistance.&nbsp; Harold of England, not being able, in his own words,
+to be everywhere at once, had done what he could.&nbsp; He and his brothers
+Gyrth and Leofwine undertook the defence of southern England against
+the Norman; the earls of the North, his brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere,
+were to defend their own land against the Norwegians.&nbsp; His own
+preparations were looked on with wonder.&nbsp; To guard the long line
+of coast against the invader, he got together such a force both by sea
+and land as no king had ever got together before, and he kept it together
+for a longer time than William did, through four months of inaction,
+save perhaps some small encounters by sea.&nbsp; At last, early in September,
+provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to go back for the harvest,
+and the great host had to be disbanded.&nbsp; Could William have sailed
+as soon as his fleet was ready, he would have found southern England
+thoroughly prepared to meet him.&nbsp; Meanwhile the northern earls
+had clearly not kept so good watch as the king.&nbsp; Harold Hardrada
+harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed without
+resistance.&nbsp; At last the earls met him in arms and were defeated
+by the Northmen at Fulford near York.&nbsp; Four days later York capitulated,
+and agreed to receive Harold Hardrada as king.&nbsp; Meanwhile the news
+reached Harold of England; he got together his housecarls and such other
+troops as could be mustered at the moment, and by a march of almost
+incredible speed he was able to save the city and all northern England.&nbsp;
+The fight of Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous
+warrior of the North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of
+England.&nbsp; But his northward march had left southern England utterly
+unprotected.&nbsp; Had the south wind delayed a little longer, he might,
+before the second enemy came, have been again on the South-Saxon coast.&nbsp;
+As it was, three days after Stamfordbridge, while Harold of England
+was still at York, William of Normandy landed without opposition at
+Pevensey.</p>
+<p>Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for William.&nbsp;
+The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for his purposes,
+and the result had been what he must have wished.&nbsp; With one Harold
+he must fight, and to fight with Harold of England was clearly best
+for his ends.&nbsp; His work would not have been done, if another had
+stepped in to chastise the perjurer.&nbsp; Now that he was in England,
+it became a trial of generalship between him and Harold.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+policy was to provoke Harold to fight at once.&nbsp; It was perhaps
+Harold&rsquo;s policy&mdash;so at least thought Gyrth&mdash;to follow
+yet more thoroughly William&rsquo;s own example in the French invasions.&nbsp;
+Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid all action, and even
+lay waste the land between London and the south coast, and the strength
+of the invaders would gradually be worn out.&nbsp; But it might have
+been hard to enforce such a policy on men whose hearts were stirred
+by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King&rsquo;s own thegns and
+housecarls, were eager to follow up their victory over the Northern
+with a yet mightier victory over the Norman.&nbsp; And Harold spoke
+as an English king should speak, when he answered that he would never
+lay waste a single rood of English ground, that he would never harm
+the lands or the goods of the men who had chosen him to be their king.&nbsp;
+In the trial of skill between the two commanders, each to some extent
+carried his point.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s havoc of a large part of Sussex
+compelled Harold to march at once to give battle.&nbsp; But Harold was
+able to give battle at a place of his own choosing, thoroughly suited
+for the kind of warfare which he had to wage.</p>
+<p>Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being too
+eager to fight and not waiting for more troops.&nbsp; But to any one
+who studies the ground it is plain that Harold needed, not more troops,
+but to some extent better troops, and that he would not have got those
+better troops by waiting.&nbsp; From York Harold had marched to London,
+as the meeting-place for southern and eastern England, as well as for
+the few who actually followed him from the North and those who joined
+him on the march.&nbsp; Edwin and Morkere were bidden to follow with
+the full force of their earldoms.&nbsp; This they took care not to do.&nbsp;
+Harold and his West-Saxons had saved them, but they would not strike
+a blow back again.&nbsp; Both now and earlier in the year they doubtless
+aimed at a division of the kingdom, such as had been twice made within
+fifty years.&nbsp; Either Harold or William might reign in Wessex and
+East-Anglia; Edwin should reign in Northumberland and Mercia.&nbsp;
+William, the enemy of Harold but no enemy of theirs, might be satisfied
+with the part of England which was under the immediate rule of Harold
+and his brothers, and might allow the house of Leofric to keep at least
+an under-kingship in the North.&nbsp; That the brother earls held back
+from the King&rsquo;s muster is undoubted, and this explanation fits
+in with their whole conduct both before and after.&nbsp; Harold had
+thus at his command the picked men of part of England only, and he had
+to supply the place of those who were lacking with such forces as he
+could get.&nbsp; The lack of discipline on the part of these inferior
+troops lost Harold the battle.&nbsp; But matters would hardly have been
+mended by waiting for men who had made up their minds not to come.</p>
+<p>The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately before the
+battle, as well as at an earlier time, have been spoken of already.&nbsp;
+The challenge to single combat at least comes now.&nbsp; When Harold
+refused every demand, William called on Harold to spare the blood of
+his followers, and decide his claims by battle in his own person.&nbsp;
+Such a challenge was in the spirit of Norman jurisprudence, which in
+doubtful cases looked for the judgement of God, not, as the English
+did, by the ordeal, but by the personal combat of the two parties.&nbsp;
+Yet this challenge too was surely given in the hope that Harold would
+refuse it, and would thereby put himself, in Norman eyes, yet more thoroughly
+in the wrong.&nbsp; For the challenge was one which Harold could not
+but refuse.&nbsp; William looked on himself as one who claimed his own
+from one who wrongfully kept him out of it.&nbsp; He was plaintiff in
+a suit in which Harold was defendant; that plaintiff and defendant were
+both accompanied by armies was an accident for which the defendant,
+who had refused all peaceful means of settlement, was to blame.&nbsp;
+But Harold and his people could not look on the matter as a mere question
+between two men.&nbsp; The crown was Harold&rsquo;s by the gift of the
+nation, and he could not sever his own cause from the cause of the nation.&nbsp;
+The crown was his; but it was not his to stake on the issue of a single
+combat.&nbsp; If Harold were killed, the nation might give the crown
+to whom they thought good; Harold&rsquo;s death could not make William&rsquo;s
+claim one jot better.&nbsp; The cause was not personal, but national.&nbsp;
+The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged, not the King only,
+but every man in England, and every man might claim to help in driving
+him out.&nbsp; Again, in an ordinary wager of battle, the judgement
+can be enforced; here, whether William slew Harold or Harold slew William,
+there was no means of enforcing the judgement except by the strength
+of the two armies.&nbsp; If Harold fell, the English army were not likely
+to receive William as king; if William fell, the Norman army was still
+less likely to go quietly out of England.&nbsp; The challenge was meant
+as a mere blind; it would raise the spirit of William&rsquo;s followers;
+it would be something for his poets and chroniclers to record in his
+honour; that was all.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus&rsquo; day,
+was more than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and
+two armies.&nbsp; It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman,
+a trial between two modes of warfare.&nbsp; The English clave to the
+old Teutonic tactics.&nbsp; They fought on foot in the close array of
+the shield-wall.&nbsp; Those who rode to the field dismounted when the
+fight began.&nbsp; They first hurled their javelins, and then took to
+the weapons of close combat.&nbsp; Among these the Danish axe, brought
+in by Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English broadsword.&nbsp;
+Such was the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had followed
+Harold from York or joined him on his march.&nbsp; But the treason of
+Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of the picked
+men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almost anyhow.&nbsp;
+Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest.&nbsp; The
+strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the English were lacking,
+in horsemen and archers.&nbsp; These last seem to have been a force
+of William&rsquo;s training; we first hear of the Norman bowmen at Varaville.&nbsp;
+These two ways of fighting were brought each one to perfection by the
+leaders on each side.&nbsp; They had not yet been tried against one
+another.&nbsp; At Stamfordbridge Harold had defeated an enemy whose
+tactics were the same as his own.&nbsp; William had not fought a pitched
+battle since Val-&egrave;s-dunes in his youth.&nbsp; Indeed pitched
+battles, such as English and Scandinavian warriors were used to in the
+wars of Edmund and Cnut, were rare in continental warfare.&nbsp; That
+warfare mainly consisted in the attack and defence of strong places,
+and in skirmishes fought under their walls.&nbsp; But William knew how
+to make use of troops of different kinds and to adapt them to any emergency.&nbsp;
+Harold too was a man of resources; he had gained his Welsh successes
+by adapting his men to the enemy&rsquo;s way of fighting.&nbsp; To withstand
+the charge of the Norman horsemen, Harold clave to the national tactics,
+but he chose for the place of battle a spot where those tactics would
+have the advantage.&nbsp; A battle on the low ground would have been
+favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and fenced in a hill,
+the hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey and town of
+Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack.&nbsp; The Norman horsemen
+had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the English
+javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the barricade.&nbsp;
+And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the inferior troops
+were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the Bretons whom they
+had driven back.&nbsp; This suggested to William the device of the feigned
+flight; the English line of defence was broken, and the advantage of
+ground was lost.&nbsp; Thus was the great battle lost.&nbsp; And the
+war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left
+England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold&rsquo;s
+immediate following.&nbsp; They were slain to a man, and south-eastern
+England was left defenceless.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far
+from having full possession of his conquest.&nbsp; He had military possession
+of part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and
+he met with not a little.&nbsp; But his combined luck and policy served
+him well.&nbsp; He could put on the form of full possession before he
+had the reality; he could treat all further resistance as rebellion
+against an established authority; he could make resistance desultory
+and isolated.&nbsp; William had to subdue England in detail; he had
+never again to fight what the English Chroniclers call a <i>folk-fight</i>.&nbsp;
+His policy after his victory was obvious.&nbsp; Still uncrowned, he
+was not, even in his own view, king, but he alone had the right to become
+king.&nbsp; He had thus far been driven to maintain his rights by force;
+he was not disposed to use force any further, if peaceful possession
+was to be had.&nbsp; His course was therefore to show himself stern
+to all who withstood him, but to take all who submitted into his protection
+and favour.&nbsp; He seems however to have looked for a speedier submission
+than really happened.&nbsp; He waited a while in his camp for men to
+come in and acknowledge him.&nbsp; As none came, he set forth to win
+by the strong arm the land which he claimed of right.</p>
+<p>Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully
+believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in
+it all the more after the issue of the battle.&nbsp; God, Harold had
+said, should judge between himself and William, and God had judged in
+William&rsquo;s favour.&nbsp; With all his clear-sightedness, he would
+hardly understand how differently things looked in English eyes.&nbsp;
+Some indeed, specially churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began
+to doubt whether to fight against William was not to fight against God.&nbsp;
+But to the nation at large William was simply as Hubba, Swegen, and
+Cnut in past times.&nbsp; England had before now been conquered, but
+never in a single fight.&nbsp; Alfred and Edmund had fought battle after
+battle with the Dane, and men had no mind to submit to the Norman because
+he had been once victorious.&nbsp; But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate
+defeat and victory, lived to fight again; their people had not to choose
+a new king; the King had merely to gather a new army.&nbsp; But Harold
+was slain, and the first question was how to fill his place.&nbsp; The
+Witan, so many as could be got together, met to choose a king, whose
+first duty would be to meet William the Conqueror in arms.&nbsp; The
+choice was not easy.&nbsp; Harold&rsquo;s sons were young, and not born
+&AElig;thelings.&nbsp; His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must have
+been fit to reign, had fallen with him.&nbsp; Edwin and Morkere were
+not at the battle, but they were at the election.&nbsp; But schemes
+for winning the crown for the house of Leofric would find no favour
+in an assembly held in London.&nbsp; For lack of any better candidate,
+the hereditary sentiment prevailed.&nbsp; Young Edgar was chosen.&nbsp;
+But the bishops, it is said, did not agree; they must have held that
+God had declared in favour of William.&nbsp; Edwin and Morkere did agree;
+but they withdrew to their earldoms, still perhaps cherishing hopes
+of a divided kingdom.&nbsp; Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act
+of kingship by confirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough;
+but of any general preparation for warfare there is not a sign.&nbsp;
+The local resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined
+action, the case was not hopeless.&nbsp; But with Edgar for king, with
+the northern earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops at least
+lukewarm, nothing could be done.&nbsp; The Londoners were eager to fight;
+so doubtless were others; but there was no leader.&nbsp; So far from
+there being another Harold or Edmund to risk another battle, there was
+not even a leader to carry out the policy of Fabius and Gyrth.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and after
+his own fashion.&nbsp; We must remember the effect of the mere slaughter
+of the great battle.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s own army had suffered severely:
+he did not leave Hastings till he had received reinforcements from Normandy.&nbsp;
+But to England the battle meant the loss of the whole force of the south-eastern
+shires.&nbsp; A large part of England was left helpless.&nbsp; William
+followed much the same course as he had followed in Maine.&nbsp; A legal
+claimant of the crown, it was his interest as soon as possible to become
+a crowned king, and that in his kinsman&rsquo;s church at Westminster.&nbsp;
+But it was not his interest to march straight on London and demand the
+crown, sword in hand.&nbsp; He saw that, without the support of the
+northern earls, Edgar could not possibly stand, and that submission
+to himself was only a question of time.&nbsp; He therefore chose a roundabout
+course through those south-eastern shires which were wholly without
+means of resisting him.&nbsp; He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying
+the land as he went, to frighten the people into submission.&nbsp; The
+men of Romney had before the battle cut in pieces a party of Normans
+who had fallen into their hands, most likely by sea.&nbsp; William took
+some undescribed vengeance for their slaughter.&nbsp; Dover and its
+castle, the castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrender
+to William, yielded without a blow.&nbsp; Here then he was gracious.&nbsp;
+When some of his unruly followers set fire to the houses of the town,
+William made good the losses of their owners.&nbsp; Canterbury submitted;
+from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers who received the submission
+of Winchester.&nbsp; He marched on, ravaging as he went, to the immediate
+neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the right bank of the Thames.&nbsp;
+But a gallant sally of the citizens was repulsed by the Normans, and
+the suburb of Southwark was burned.&nbsp; William marched along the
+river to Wallingford.&nbsp; Here he crossed, receiving for the first
+time the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod of Wallingford,
+sheriff of Oxfordshire.&nbsp; He became one of a small class of Englishmen
+who were received to William&rsquo;s fullest favour, and kept at least
+as high a position under him as they had held before.&nbsp; William
+still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he
+had before done to the south.&nbsp; The city was to be isolated within
+a cordon of wasted lands.&nbsp; His policy succeeded.&nbsp; As no succours
+came from the North, the hearts of those who had chosen them a king
+failed at the approach of his rival.&nbsp; At Berkhampstead Edgar himself,
+with several bishops and chief men, came to make their submission.&nbsp;
+They offered the crown to William, and, after some debate, he accepted
+it.&nbsp; But before he came in person, he took means to secure the
+city.&nbsp; The beginnings of the fortress were now laid which, in the
+course of William&rsquo;s reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London.</p>
+<p>It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within
+his grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter of
+debate.&nbsp; He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered
+to him; and yet he doubts about taking it.&nbsp; Ought he, he asks,
+to take the crown of a kingdom of which he has not as yet full possession?&nbsp;
+At that time the territory of which William had even military possession
+could not have stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from
+Winchester to Norwich.&nbsp; Outside that line men were, as William
+is made to say, still in rebellion.&nbsp; His scruples were come over
+by an orator who was neither Norman nor English, but one of his foreign
+followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars.&nbsp; The debate was most likely
+got up at William&rsquo;s bidding, but it was not got up without a motive.&nbsp;
+William, ever seeking outward legality, seeking to do things peaceably
+when they could be done peaceably, seeking for means to put every possible
+enemy in the wrong, wished to make his acceptance of the English crown
+as formally regular as might be.&nbsp; Strong as he held his claim to
+be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to be, if not strictly
+chosen, at least peacefully accepted, by the chief men of England.&nbsp;
+It might some day serve his purpose to say that the crown had been offered
+to him, and that he had accepted it only after a debate in which the
+chief speaker was an impartial stranger.&nbsp; Having gained this point
+more, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in outward form,
+King-elect of the English.</p>
+<p>The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full king took
+place in Eadward&rsquo;s church of Westminster on Christmas day, 1066,
+somewhat more than two months after the great battle, somewhat less
+than twelve months after the death of Edward and the coronation of Harold.&nbsp;
+Nothing that was needed for a lawful crowning was lacking.&nbsp; The
+consent of the people, the oath of the king, the anointing by the hands
+of a lawful metropolitan, all were there.&nbsp; Ealdred acted as the
+actual celebrant, while Stigand took the second place in the ceremony.&nbsp;
+But this outward harmony between the nation and its new king was marred
+by an unhappy accident.&nbsp; Norman horsemen stationed outside the
+church mistook the shout with which the people accepted the new king
+for the shout of men who were doing him damage.&nbsp; But instead of
+going to his help, they began, in true Norman fashion, to set fire to
+the neighbouring houses.&nbsp; The havoc and plunder that followed disturbed
+the solemnities of the day and were a bad omen for the new reign.&nbsp;
+It was no personal fault of William&rsquo;s; in putting himself in the
+hands of subjects of such new and doubtful loyalty, he needed men near
+at hand whom he could trust.&nbsp; But then it was his doing that England
+had to receive a king who needed foreign soldiers to guard him.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outward ceremonies
+could make him so.&nbsp; But he knew well how far he was from having
+won real kingly authority over the whole kingdom.&nbsp; Hardly a third
+part of the land was in his obedience.&nbsp; He had still, as he doubtless
+knew, to win his realm with the edge of the sword.&nbsp; But he could
+now go forth to further conquests, not as a foreign invader, but as
+the king of the land, putting down rebellion among his own subjects.&nbsp;
+If the men of Northumberland should refuse to receive him, he could
+tell them that he was their lawful king, anointed by their own archbishop.&nbsp;
+It was sound policy to act as king of the whole land, to exercise a
+semblance of authority where he had none in fact.&nbsp; And in truth
+he was king of the whole land, so far as there was no other king.&nbsp;
+The unconquered parts of the land were in no mood to submit; but they
+could not agree on any common plan of resistance under any common leader.&nbsp;
+Some were still for Edgar, some for Harold&rsquo;s sons, some for Swegen
+of Denmark.&nbsp; Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for themselves.&nbsp;
+If one common leader could have been found even now, the throne of the
+foreign king would have been in no small danger.&nbsp; But no such leader
+came: men stood still, or resisted piecemeal, so the land was conquered
+piecemeal, and that under cover of being brought under the obedience
+of its lawful king.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his career as
+an English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful career it is.&nbsp;
+Its main principle was to respect formal legality wherever he could.&nbsp;
+All William&rsquo;s purposes were to be carried out, as far as possible,
+under cover of strict adherence to the law of the land of which he had
+become the lawful ruler.&nbsp; He had sworn at his crowning to keep
+the laws of the land, and to rule his kingdom as well as any king that
+had gone before him.&nbsp; And assuredly he meant to keep his oath.&nbsp;
+But a foreign king, at the head of a foreign army, and who had his foreign
+followers to reward, could keep that oath only in its letter and not
+in its spirit.&nbsp; But it is wonderful how nearly he came to keep
+it in the letter.&nbsp; He contrived to do his most oppressive acts,
+to deprive Englishmen of their lands and offices, and to part them out
+among strangers, under cover of English law.&nbsp; He could do this.&nbsp;
+A smaller man would either have failed to carry out his purposes at
+all, or he could have carried them out only by reckless violence.&nbsp;
+When we examine the administration of William more in detail, we shall
+see that its effects in the long run were rather to preserve than to
+destroy our ancient institutions.&nbsp; He knew the strength of legal
+fictions; by legal fictions he conquered and he ruled.&nbsp; But every
+legal fiction is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward
+protest against unlawful violence.&nbsp; That England underwent a Norman
+Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly England.&nbsp;
+But that this could be was because that conquest was wrought by the
+Bastard of Falaise and by none other.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND&mdash;DECEMBER 1066-MARCH
+1070</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The coronation of William had its effect in a moment.&nbsp; It made
+him really king over part of England; it put him into a new position
+with regard to the rest.&nbsp; As soon as there was a king, men flocked
+to swear oaths to him and become his men.&nbsp; They came from shires
+where he had no real authority.&nbsp; It was most likely now, rather
+than at Berkhampstead, that Edwin and Morkere at last made up their
+minds to acknowledge some king.&nbsp; They became William&rsquo;s men
+and received again their lands and earldoms as his grant.&nbsp; Other
+chief men from the North also submitted and received their lands and
+honours again.&nbsp; But Edwin and Morkere were not allowed to go back
+to their earldoms.&nbsp; William thought it safer to keep them near
+himself, under the guise of honour&mdash;Edwin was even promised one
+of his daughters in marriage&mdash;but really half as prisoners, half
+as hostages.&nbsp; Of the two other earls, Waltheof son of Siward, who
+held the shires of Northampton and Huntingdon, and Oswulf who held the
+earldom of Bernicia or modern Northumberland, we hear nothing at this
+moment.&nbsp; As for Waltheof, it is strange if he were not at Senlac;
+it is strange if he were there and came away alive.&nbsp; But we only
+know that he was in William&rsquo;s allegiance a few months later.&nbsp;
+Oswulf must have held out in some marked way.&nbsp; It was William&rsquo;s
+policy to act as king even where he had no means of carrying out his
+kingly orders.&nbsp; He therefore in February 1067 granted the Bernician
+earldom to an Englishman named Copsige, who had acted as Tostig&rsquo;s
+lieutenant.&nbsp; This implies the formal deprivation of Oswulf.&nbsp;
+But William sent no force with the new earl, who had to take possession
+as he could.&nbsp; That is to say, of two parties in a local quarrel,
+one hoped to strengthen itself by making use of William&rsquo;s name.&nbsp;
+And William thought that it would strengthen his position to let at
+least his name be heard in every corner of the kingdom.&nbsp; The rest
+of the story stands rather aloof from the main history.&nbsp; Copsige
+got possession of the earldom for a moment.&nbsp; He was then killed
+by Oswulf and his partisans, and Oswulf himself was killed in the course
+of the year by a common robber.&nbsp; At Christmas, 1067, William again
+granted or sold the earldom to another of the local chiefs, Gospatric.&nbsp;
+But he made no attempt to exercise direct authority in those parts till
+the beginning of the year 1069.</p>
+<p>All this illustrates William&rsquo;s general course.&nbsp; Crowned
+king over the land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of
+the kingdom which he actually held.&nbsp; Of the passive disobedience
+of other parts he would take no present notice.&nbsp; In northern and
+central England William could exercise no authority; but those lands
+were not in arms against him, nor did they acknowledge any other king.&nbsp;
+Their earls, now his earls, were his favoured courtiers.&nbsp; He could
+afford to be satisfied with this nominal kingship, till a fit opportunity
+came to make it real.&nbsp; He could afford to lend his name to the
+local enterprise of Copsige.&nbsp; It would at least be another count
+against the men of Bernicia that they had killed the earl whom King
+William gave them.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile William was taking very practical possession in the shires
+where late events had given him real authority.&nbsp; His policy was
+to assert his rights in the strongest form, but to show his mildness
+and good will by refraining from carrying them out to the uttermost.&nbsp;
+By right of conquest William claimed nothing.&nbsp; He had come to take
+his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition in taking it.&nbsp;
+The crown lands of King Edward passed of course to his successor.&nbsp;
+As for the lands of other men, in William&rsquo;s theory all was forfeited
+to the crown.&nbsp; The lawful heir had been driven to seek his kingdom
+in arms; no Englishman had helped him; many Englishmen had fought against
+him.&nbsp; All then were directly or indirectly traitors.&nbsp; The
+King might lawfully deal with the lands of all as his own.&nbsp; But
+in the greater part of the kingdom it was impossible, in no part was
+it prudent, to carry out this doctrine in its fulness.&nbsp; A passage
+in Domesday, compared with a passage in the English Chronicles, shows
+that, soon after William&rsquo;s coronation, the English as a body,
+within the lands already conquered, redeemed their lands.&nbsp; They
+bought them back at a price, and held them as a fresh grant from King
+William.&nbsp; Some special offenders, living and dead, were exempted
+from this favour.&nbsp; The King took to himself the estates of the
+house of Godwine, save those of Edith, the widow of his revered predecessor,
+whom it was his policy to treat with all honour.&nbsp; The lands too
+of those who had died on Senlac were granted back to their heirs only
+of special favour, sometimes under the name of alms.&nbsp; Thus, from
+the beginning of his reign, William began to make himself richer than
+any king that had been before him in England or than any other Western
+king of his day.&nbsp; He could both punish his enemies and reward his
+friends.&nbsp; Much of what he took he kept; much he granted away, mainly
+to his foreign followers, but sometimes also to Englishmen who had in
+any way won his favour.&nbsp; Wiggod of Wallingford was one of the very
+few Englishmen who kept and received estates which put them alongside
+of the great Norman landowners.&nbsp; The doctrine that all land was
+held of the King was now put into a practical shape.&nbsp; All, Englishmen
+and strangers, not only became William&rsquo;s subjects, but his men
+and his grantees.&nbsp; Thus he went on during his whole reign.&nbsp;
+There was no sudden change from the old state of things to the new.&nbsp;
+After the general redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William&rsquo;s
+power advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such.&nbsp;
+They were not, like some conquered nations, formally degraded or put
+under any legal incapacities in their own land.&nbsp; William simply
+distinguished between his loyal and his disloyal subjects, and used
+his opportunities for punishing the disloyal and rewarding the loyal.&nbsp;
+Such punishments and rewards naturally took the shape of confiscations
+and grants of land.&nbsp; If punishment was commonly the lot of the
+Englishman, and reward was the lot of the stranger, that was only because
+King William treated all men as they deserved.&nbsp; Most Englishmen
+were disloyal; most strangers were loyal.&nbsp; But disloyal strangers
+and loyal Englishmen fared according to their deserts.&nbsp; The final
+result of this process, begun now and steadily carried on, was that,
+by the end of William&rsquo;s reign, the foreign king was surrounded
+by a body of foreign landowners and office-bearers of foreign birth.&nbsp;
+When, in the early days of his conquest, he gathered round him the great
+men of his realm, it was still an English assembly with a sprinkling
+of strangers.&nbsp; By the end of his reign it had changed, step by
+step, into an assembly of strangers with a sprinkling of Englishmen.</p>
+<p>This revolution, which practically transferred the greater part of
+the soil of England to the hands of strangers, was great indeed.&nbsp;
+But it must not be mistaken for a sudden blow, for an irregular scramble,
+for a formal proscription of Englishmen as such.&nbsp; William, according
+to his character and practice, was able to do all this gradually, according
+to legal forms, and without drawing any formal distinction between natives
+and strangers.&nbsp; All land was held of the King of the English, according
+to the law of England.&nbsp; It may seem strange how such a process
+of spoliation, veiled under a legal fiction, could have been carried
+out without resistance.&nbsp; It was easier because it was gradual and
+piecemeal.&nbsp; The whole country was not touched at once, nor even
+the whole of any one district.&nbsp; One man lost his land while his
+neighbour kept his, and he who kept his land was not likely to join
+in the possible plots of the other.&nbsp; And though the land had never
+seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners,
+yet there was nothing new in the thing itself.&nbsp; Danes had settled
+under Cnut, and Normans and other Frenchmen under Edward.&nbsp; Confiscation
+of land was the everyday punishment for various public and private crimes.&nbsp;
+In any change, such as we should call a change of ministry, as at the
+fall and the return of Godwine, outlawry and forfeiture of lands was
+the usual doom of the weaker party, a milder doom than the judicial
+massacres of later ages.&nbsp; Even a conquest of England was nothing
+new, and William at this stage contrasted favourably with Cnut, whose
+early days were marked by the death of not a few.&nbsp; William, at
+any rate since his crowning, had shed the blood of no man.&nbsp; Men
+perhaps thought that things might have been much worse, and that they
+were not unlikely to mend.&nbsp; Anyhow, weakened, cowed, isolated,
+the people of the conquered shires submitted humbly to the Conqueror&rsquo;s
+will.&nbsp; It needed a kind of oppression of which William himself
+was never guilty to stir them into actual revolt.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The provocation was not long in coming.&nbsp; Within three months
+after his coronation, William paid a visit to his native duchy.&nbsp;
+The ruler of two states could not be always in either; he owed it to
+his old subjects to show himself among them in his new character; and
+his absence might pass as a sign of the trust he put in his new subjects.&nbsp;
+But the means which he took to secure their obedience brought out his
+one weak point.&nbsp; We cannot believe that he really wished to goad
+the people into rebellion; yet the choice of his lieutenants might seem
+almost like it.&nbsp; He was led astray by partiality for his brother
+and for his dearest friend.&nbsp; To Bishop Ode of Bayeux, and to William
+Fitz-Osbern, the son of his early guardian, he gave earldoms, that of
+Kent to Odo, that of Hereford to William.&nbsp; The Conqueror was determined
+before all things that his kingdom should be united and obedient; England
+should not be split up like Gaul and Germany; he would have no man in
+England whose formal homage should carry with it as little of practical
+obedience as his own homage to the King of the French.&nbsp; A Norman
+earl of all Wessex or all Mercia might strive after such a position.&nbsp;
+William therefore forsook the old practice of dividing the whole kingdom
+into earldoms.&nbsp; In the peaceful central shires he would himself
+rule through his sheriffs and other immediate officers; he would appoint
+earls only in dangerous border districts where they were needed as military
+commanders.&nbsp; All William&rsquo;s earls were in fact <i>marquesses</i>,
+guardians of a march or frontier.&nbsp; Ode had to keep Kent against
+attacks from the continent; William Fitz-Osbern had to keep Herefordshire
+against the Welsh and the independent English.&nbsp; This last shire
+had its own local warfare.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s authority did not yet
+reach over all the shires beyond London and Hereford; but Harold had
+allowed some of Edward&rsquo;s Norman favourites to keep power there.&nbsp;
+Hereford then and part of its shire formed an isolated part of William&rsquo;s
+dominions, while the lands around remained unsubdued.&nbsp; William
+Fitz-Osbern had to guard this dangerous land as earl.&nbsp; But during
+the King&rsquo;s absence both he and Ode received larger commissions
+as viceroys over the whole kingdom.&nbsp; Ode guarded the South and
+William the North and North-East.&nbsp; Norwich, a town dangerous from
+its easy communication with Denmark, was specially under his care.&nbsp;
+The nominal earls of the rest of the land, Edwin, Morkere, and Waltheof,
+with Edgar, King of a moment, Archbishop Stigand, and a number of other
+chief men, William took with him to Normandy.&nbsp; Nominally his cherished
+friends and guests, they went in truth, as one of the English Chroniclers
+calls them, as hostages.</p>
+<p>William&rsquo;s stay in Normandy lasted about six months.&nbsp; It
+was chiefly devoted to rejoicings and religious ceremonies, but partly
+to Norman legislation.&nbsp; Rich gifts from the spoils of England were
+given to the churches of Normandy; gifts richer still were sent to the
+Church of Rome whose favour had wrought so much for William.&nbsp; In
+exchange for the banner of Saint Peter, Harold&rsquo;s standard of the
+Fighting-man was sent as an offering to the head of all churches.&nbsp;
+While William was in Normandy, Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen died.&nbsp;
+The whole duchy named Lanfranc as his successor; but he declined the
+post, and was himself sent to Rome to bring the pallium for the new
+archbishop John, a kinsman of the ducal house.&nbsp; Lanfranc doubtless
+refused the see of Rouen only because he was designed for a yet greater
+post in England; the subtlest diplomatist in Europe was not sent to
+Rome merely to ask for the pallium for Archbishop John.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile William&rsquo;s choice of lieutenants bore its fruit in
+England.&nbsp; They wrought such oppression as William himself never
+wrought.&nbsp; The inferior leaders did as they thought good, and the
+two earls restrained them not.&nbsp; The earls meanwhile were in one
+point there faithfully carrying out the policy of their master in the
+building of castles; a work, which specially when the work of Ode and
+William Fitz-Osbern, is always spoken of by the native writers with
+marked horror.&nbsp; The castles were the badges and the instruments
+of the Conquest, the special means of holding the land in bondage.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile tumults broke forth in various parts.&nbsp; The slaughter
+of Copsige, William&rsquo;s earl in Northumberland, took place about
+the time of the King&rsquo;s sailing for Normandy.&nbsp; In independent
+Herefordshire the leading Englishman in those parts, Eadric, whom the
+Normans called the <i>Wild</i>, allied himself with the Welsh, harried
+the obedient lands, and threatened the castle of Hereford.&nbsp; Nothing
+was done on either side beyond harrying and skirmishes; but Eadric&rsquo;s
+corner of the land remained unsubdued.&nbsp; The men of Kent made a
+strange foreign alliance with Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law
+of Edward, the man whose deeds had led to the great movement of Edward&rsquo;s
+reign, to the banishment and the return of Godwine.&nbsp; He had fought
+against England on Senlac, and was one of four who had dealt the last
+blow to the wounded Harold.&nbsp; But the oppression of Ode made the
+Kentishmen glad to seek any help against him.&nbsp; Eustace, now William&rsquo;s
+enemy, came over, and gave help in an unsuccessful attack on Dover castle.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile in the obedient shires men were making ready for revolt; in
+the unsubdued lands they were making ready for more active defence.&nbsp;
+Many went beyond sea to ask for foreign help, specially in the kindred
+lands of Denmark and Northern Germany.&nbsp; Against this threatening
+movement William&rsquo;s strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies
+for combined action.&nbsp; The whole land never rose at once, and Danish
+help did not come at the times or in the shape when it could have done
+most good.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The news of these movements brought William back to England in December.&nbsp;
+He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at Westminster; there the absent
+Eustace was, by a characteristic stroke of policy, arraigned as a traitor.&nbsp;
+He was a foreign prince against whom the Duke of the Normans might have
+led a Norman army.&nbsp; But he had also become an English landowner,
+and in that character he was accountable to the King and Witan of England.&nbsp;
+He suffered the traitor&rsquo;s punishment of confiscation of lands.&nbsp;
+Afterwards he contrived to win back William&rsquo;s favour, and he left
+great English possessions to his second wife and his son.&nbsp; Another
+stroke of policy was to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the
+hostile purposes of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelate
+who had been in high favour with both Edward and Harold, &AElig;thelsige,
+Abbot of Ramsey.&nbsp; It came perhaps of his mission that Swegen practically
+did nothing for two years.&nbsp; The envoy&rsquo;s own life was a chequered
+one.&nbsp; He lost William&rsquo;s favour, and sought shelter in Denmark.&nbsp;
+He again regained William&rsquo;s favour&mdash;perhaps by some service
+at the Danish court&mdash;and died in possession of his abbey.</p>
+<p>It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William bestowed
+several great offices.&nbsp; The earldom of Northumberland was vacant
+by the slaughter of two earls, the bishopric of Dorchester by the peaceful
+death of its bishop.&nbsp; William had no real authority in any part
+of Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the diocese of Dorchester.&nbsp;
+But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as in his own power.&nbsp;
+It was now that he granted Northumberland to Gospatric.&nbsp; The appointment
+to the bishopric was the beginning of a new system.&nbsp; Englishmen
+were now to give way step by step to strangers in the highest offices
+and greatest estates of the land.&nbsp; He had already made two Norman
+earls, but they were to act as military commanders.&nbsp; He now made
+an English earl, whose earldom was likely to be either nominal or fatal.&nbsp;
+The appointment of Remigius of F&eacute;camp to the see of Dorchester
+was of more real importance.&nbsp; It is the beginning of William&rsquo;s
+ecclesiastical reign, the first step in William&rsquo;s scheme of making
+the Church his instrument in keeping down the conquered.&nbsp; While
+William lived, no Englishman was appointed to a bishopric.&nbsp; As
+bishoprics became vacant by death, foreigners were nominated, and excuses
+were often found for hastening a vacancy by deprivation.&nbsp; At the
+end of William&rsquo;s reign one English bishop only was left.&nbsp;
+With abbots, as having less temporal power than bishops, the rule was
+less strict.&nbsp; Foreigners were preferred, but Englishmen were not
+wholly shut out.&nbsp; And the general process of confiscation and regrant
+of lands was vigorously carried out.&nbsp; The Kentish revolt and the
+general movement must have led to many forfeitures and to further grants
+to loyal men of either nation.&nbsp; As the English Chronicles pithily
+puts it, &ldquo;the King gave away every man&rsquo;s land.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>William could soon grant lands in new parts of England.&nbsp; In
+February 1068 he for the first time went forth to warfare with those
+whom he called his subjects, but who had never submitted to him.&nbsp;
+In the course of the year a large part of England was in arms against
+him.&nbsp; But there was no concert; the West rose and the North rose;
+but the West rose first, and the North did not rise till the West had
+been subdued.&nbsp; Western England threw off the purely passive state
+which had lasted through the year 1067.&nbsp; Hitherto each side had
+left the other alone.&nbsp; But now the men of the West made ready for
+a more direct opposition to the foreign government.&nbsp; If they could
+not drive William out of what he had already won, they would at least
+keep him from coming any further.&nbsp; Exeter, the greatest city of
+the West, was the natural centre of resistance; the smaller towns, at
+least of Devonshire and Dorset entered into a league with the capital.&nbsp;
+They seem to have aimed, like Italian cities in the like case, at the
+formation of a civic confederation, which might perhaps find it expedient
+to acknowledge William as an external lord, but which would maintain
+perfect internal independence.&nbsp; Still, as Gytha, widow of Godwine,
+mother of Harold, was within the walls of Exeter, the movement was doubtless
+also in some sort on behalf of the House of Godwine.&nbsp; In any case,
+Exeter and the lands and towns in its alliance with Exeter strengthened
+themselves in every way against attack.</p>
+<p>Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen on their
+own soil withstood one who, however he might cloke his enterprise, was
+to them simply a foreign invader.&nbsp; But William was not yet, as
+he was in some later struggles, the <i>de facto</i> king of the whole
+land, whom all had acknowledged, and opposition to whom was in form
+rebellion.&nbsp; He now held an intermediate position.&nbsp; He was
+still an invader; for Exeter had never submitted to him; but the crowned
+King of the English, peacefully ruling over many shires, was hardly
+a mere invader; resistance to him would have the air of rebellion in
+the eyes of many besides William and his flatterers.&nbsp; And they
+could not see, what we plainly see, what William perhaps dimly saw,
+that it was in the long run better for Exeter, or any other part of
+England, to share, even in conquest, the fate of the whole land, rather
+than to keep on a precarious independence to the aggravation of the
+common bondage.&nbsp; This we feel throughout; William, with whatever
+motive, is fighting for the unity of England.&nbsp; We therefore cannot
+seriously regret his successes.&nbsp; But none the less honour is due
+to the men whom the duty of the moment bade to withstand him.&nbsp;
+They could not see things as we see them by the light of eight hundred
+years.</p>
+<p>The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only of
+Exeter that we hear any details.&nbsp; William never used force till
+he had tried negotiation.&nbsp; He sent messengers demanding that the
+citizens should take oaths to him and receive him within their walls.&nbsp;
+The choice lay now between unconditional submission and valiant resistance.&nbsp;
+But the chief men of the city chose a middle course which could gain
+nothing.&nbsp; They answered as an Italian city might have answered
+a Swabian Emperor.&nbsp; They would not receive the King within their
+walls; they would take no oaths to him; but they would pay him the tribute
+which they had paid to earlier kings.&nbsp; That is, they would not
+have him as king, but only as overlord over a commonwealth otherwise
+independent.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s answer was short; &ldquo;It is not
+my custom to take subjects on those conditions.&rdquo;&nbsp; He set
+out on his march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious English
+by the arms of the loyal English.&nbsp; He called out the <i>fyrd</i>,
+the militia, of all or some of the shires under his obedience.&nbsp;
+They answered his call; to disobey it would have needed greater courage
+than to wield the axe on Senlac.&nbsp; This use of English troops became
+William&rsquo;s custom in all his later wars, in England and on the
+mainland; but of course he did not trust to English troops only.&nbsp;
+The plan of the campaign was that which had won Le Mans and London.&nbsp;
+The towns of Dorset were frightfully harried on the march to the capital
+of the West.&nbsp; Disunion at once broke out; the leading men in Exeter
+sent to offer unconditional submission and to give hostages.&nbsp; But
+the commonalty disowned the agreement; notwithstanding the blinding
+of one of the hostages before the walls, they defended the city valiantly
+for eighteen days.&nbsp; It was only when the walls began to crumble
+away beneath William&rsquo;s mining-engines that the men of Exeter at
+last submitted to his mercy.&nbsp; And William&rsquo;s mercy could be
+trusted.&nbsp; No man was harmed in life, limb, or goods.&nbsp; But,
+to hinder further revolts, a castle was at once begun, and the payments
+made by the city to the King were largely raised.</p>
+<p>Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, and thence
+to Flanders.&nbsp; Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from thence, in the
+course of the same year and the next, they twice landed in Somerset
+and Devonshire.&nbsp; The Irish Danes who followed them could not be
+kept back from plunder.&nbsp; Englishmen as well as Normans withstood
+them, and the hopes of the House of Godwine came to an end.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the whole West.&nbsp;
+All the land south of the Thames was now in William&rsquo;s obedience.&nbsp;
+Gloucestershire seems to have submitted at the same time; the submission
+of Worcestershire is without date.&nbsp; A vast confiscation of lands
+followed, most likely by slow degrees.&nbsp; Its most memorable feature
+is that nearly all Cornwall was granted to William&rsquo;s brother Robert
+Count of Mortain.&nbsp; His vast estate grew into the famous Cornish
+earldom and duchy of later times.&nbsp; Southern England was now conquered,
+and, as the North had not stirred during the stirring of the West, the
+whole land was outwardly at peace.&nbsp; William now deemed it safe
+to bring his wife to share his new greatness.&nbsp; The Duchess Matilda
+came over to England, and was hallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop
+Ealdred.&nbsp; We may believe that no part of his success gave William
+truer pleasure.&nbsp; But the presence of the Lady was important in
+another way.&nbsp; It was doubtless by design that she gave birth on
+English soil to her youngest son, afterwards the renowned King Henry
+the First.&nbsp; He alone of William&rsquo;s children was in any sense
+an Englishman.&nbsp; Born on English ground, son of a crowned King and
+his Lady, Englishmen looked on him as a countryman.&nbsp; And his father
+saw the wisdom of encouraging such a feeling.&nbsp; Henry, surnamed
+in after days the Clerk, was brought up with special care; he was trained
+in many branches of learning unusual among the princes of his age, among
+them in a thorough knowledge of the tongue of his native land.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The campaign of Exeter is of all William&rsquo;s English campaigns
+the richest in political teaching.&nbsp; We see how near the cities
+of England came for a moment&mdash;as we shall presently see a chief
+city of northern Gaul&mdash;to running the same course as the cities
+of Italy and Provence.&nbsp; Signs of the same tendency may sometimes
+be suspected elsewhere, but they are not so clearly revealed.&nbsp;
+William&rsquo;s later campaigns are of the deepest importance in English
+history; they are far richer in recorded personal actors than the siege
+of Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on the character of William
+and his statesmanship.&nbsp; William is throughout ever ready, but never
+hasty&mdash;always willing to wait when waiting seems the best policy&mdash;always
+ready to accept a nominal success when there is a chance of turning
+it into a real one, but never accepting nominal success as a cover for
+defeat, never losing an inch of ground without at once taking measures
+to recover it.&nbsp; By this means, he has in the former part of 1068
+extended his dominion to the Land&rsquo;s End; before the end of the
+year he extends it to the Tees.&nbsp; In the next year he has indeed
+to win it back again; but he does win it back and more also.&nbsp; Early
+in 1070 he was at last, in deed as well as in name, full King over all
+England.</p>
+<p>The North was making ready for war while the war in the West went
+on, but one part of England did nothing to help the other.&nbsp; In
+the summer the movement in the North took shape.&nbsp; The nominal earls
+Edwin, Morkere, and Gospatric, with the &AElig;theling Edgar and others,
+left William&rsquo;s court to put themselves at the head of the movement.&nbsp;
+Edwin was specially aggrieved, because the king had promised him one
+of his daughters in marriage, but had delayed giving her to him.&nbsp;
+The English formed alliances with the dependent princes of Wales and
+Scotland, and stood ready to withstand any attack.&nbsp; William set
+forth; as he had taken Exeter, he took Warwick, perhaps Leicester.&nbsp;
+This was enough for Edwin and Morkere.&nbsp; They submitted, and were
+again received to favour.&nbsp; More valiant spirits withdrew northward,
+ready to defend Durham as the last shelter of independence, while Edgar
+and Gospatric fled to the court of Malcolm of Scotland.&nbsp; William
+went on, receiving the submission of Nottingham and York; thence he
+turned southward, receiving on his way the submission of Lincoln, Cambridge,
+and Huntingdon.&nbsp; Again he deemed it his policy to establish his
+power in the lands which he had already won rather than to jeopard matters
+by at once pressing farther.&nbsp; In the conquered towns he built castles,
+and he placed permanent garrisons in each district by granting estates
+to his Norman and other followers.&nbsp; Different towns and districts
+suffered in different degrees, according doubtless to the measure of
+resistance met with in each.&nbsp; Lincoln and Lincolnshire were on
+the whole favourably treated.&nbsp; An unusual number of Englishmen
+kept lands and offices in city and shire.&nbsp; At Leicester and Northampton,
+and in their shires, the wide confiscations and great destruction of
+houses point to a stout resistance.&nbsp; And though Durham was still
+untouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose of attacking
+Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with all favour a nominal
+submission brought from the King of Scots by the hands of the Bishop
+of Durham.</p>
+<p>If William&rsquo;s policy ever seems less prudent than usual, it
+was at the beginning of the next year, 1069.&nbsp; The extreme North
+still stood out.&nbsp; William had twice commissioned English earls
+of Northumberland to take possession if they could.&nbsp; He now risked
+the dangerous step of sending a stranger.&nbsp; Robert of Comines was
+appointed to the earldom forfeited by the flight of Gospatric.&nbsp;
+While it was still winter, he went with his force to Durham.&nbsp; By
+help of the Bishop, he was admitted into the city, but he and his whole
+force were cut off by the people of Durham and its neighbourhood.&nbsp;
+Robert&rsquo;s expedition in short led only to a revolt of York, where
+Edgar was received and siege was laid to the castle.&nbsp; William marched
+in person with all speed; he relieved the castle; he recovered the city
+and strengthened it by a second castle on the other side of the river.&nbsp;
+Still he thought it prudent to take no present steps against Durham.&nbsp;
+Soon after this came the second attempt of Harold&rsquo;s sons in the
+West.</p>
+<p>Later in this year William&rsquo;s final warfare for the kingdom
+began.&nbsp; In August, 1069 the long-promised help from Denmark came.&nbsp;
+Swegen sent his brother Osbeorn and his sons Harold and Cnut, at the
+head of the whole strength of Denmark and of other Northern lands.&nbsp;
+If the two enterprises of Harold&rsquo;s sons had been planned in concert
+with their Danish kinsmen, the invaders or deliverers from opposite
+sides had failed to act together.&nbsp; Nor are Swegen&rsquo;s own objects
+quite clear.&nbsp; He sought to deliver England from William and his
+Normans, but it is not so plain in whose interest he acted.&nbsp; He
+would naturally seek the English crown for himself or for one of his
+sons; the sons of Harold he would rather make earls than kings.&nbsp;
+But he could feel no interest in the kingship of Edgar.&nbsp; Yet, when
+the Danish fleet entered the Humber, and the whole force of the North
+came to meet it, the English host had the heir of Cerdic at its head.&nbsp;
+It is now that Waltheof the son of Siward, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon,
+first stands out as a leading actor.&nbsp; Gospatric too was there;
+but this time not Edwin and Morkere.&nbsp; Danes and English joined
+and marched upon York; the city was occupied; the castles were taken;
+the Norman commanders were made prisoners, but not till they had set
+fire to the city and burned the greater part of it, along with the metropolitan
+minster.&nbsp; It is amazing to read that, after breaking down the castles,
+the English host dispersed, and the Danish fleet withdrew into the Humber.</p>
+<p>England was again ruined by lack of concert.&nbsp; The news of the
+coming of the Danes led only to isolated movements which were put down
+piecemeal.&nbsp; The men of Somerset and Dorset and the men of Devonshire
+and Cornwall were put down separately, and the movement in Somerset
+was largely put down by English troops.&nbsp; The citizens of Exeter,
+as well as the Norman garrison of the castle, stood a siege on behalf
+of William.&nbsp; A rising on the Welsh border under Eadric led only
+to the burning of Shrewsbury; a rising in Staffordshire was held by
+William to call for his own presence.&nbsp; But he first marched into
+Lindesey, and drove the crews of the Danish ships across into Holderness;
+there he left two Norman leaders, one of them his brother Robert of
+Mortain and Cornwall; he then went westward and subdued Staffordshire,
+and marched towards York by way of Nottingham.&nbsp; A constrained delay
+by the Aire gave him an opportunity for negotiation with the Danish
+leaders.&nbsp; Osbeorn took bribes to forsake the English cause, and
+William reached and entered York without resistance.&nbsp; He restored
+the castles and kept his Christmas in the half-burned city.&nbsp; And
+now William forsook his usual policy of clemency.&nbsp; The Northern
+shires had been too hard to win.&nbsp; To weaken them, he decreed a
+merciless harrying of the whole land, the direct effects of which were
+seen for many years, and which left its mark on English history for
+ages.&nbsp; Till the growth of modern industry reversed the relative
+position of Northern and Southern England, the old Northumbrian kingdom
+never fully recovered from the blow dealt by William, and remained the
+most backward part of the land.&nbsp; Herein comes one of the most remarkable
+results of William&rsquo;s coming.&nbsp; His greatest work was to make
+England a kingdom which no man henceforth thought of dividing.&nbsp;
+But the circumstances of his conquest of Northern England ruled that
+for several centuries the unity of England should take the form of a
+distinct preponderance of Southern England over Northern.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+reign strengthened every tendency that way, chiefly by the fearful blow
+now dealt to the physical strength and well-being of the Northern shires.&nbsp;
+From one side indeed the Norman Conquest was truly a Saxon conquest.&nbsp;
+The King of London and Winchester became more fully than ever king over
+the whole land.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The Conqueror had now only to gather in what was still left to conquer.&nbsp;
+But, as military exploits, none are more memorable than the winter marches
+which put William into full possession of England.&nbsp; The lands beyond
+Tees still held out; in January 1070 he set forth to subdue them.&nbsp;
+The Earls Waltheof and Gospatric made their submission, Waltheof in
+person, Gospatric by proxy.&nbsp; William restored both of them to their
+earldoms, and received Waltheof to his highest favour, giving him his
+niece Judith in marriage.&nbsp; But he systematically wasted the land,
+as he had wasted Yorkshire.&nbsp; He then returned to York, and thence
+set forth to subdue the last city and shire that held out.&nbsp; A fearful
+march led him to the one remaining fragment of free England, the unconquered
+land of Chester.&nbsp; We know not how Chester fell; but the land was
+not won without fighting, and a frightful harrying was the punishment.&nbsp;
+In all this we see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the character
+of the Conqueror.&nbsp; Yet it is thoroughly characteristic.&nbsp; All
+is calm, deliberate, politic.&nbsp; William will have no more revolts,
+and he will at any cost make the land incapable of revolt.&nbsp; Yet,
+as ever, there is no blood shed save in battle.&nbsp; If men died of
+hunger, that was not William&rsquo;s doing; nay, charitable people like
+Abbot &AElig;thelwig of Evesham might do what they could to help the
+sufferers.&nbsp; But the lawful king, kept so long out of his kingdom,
+would, at whatever price, be king over the whole land.&nbsp; And the
+great harrying of the northern shires was the price paid for William&rsquo;s
+kingship over them.</p>
+<p>At Chester the work was ended which had begun at Pevensey.&nbsp;
+Less than three years and a half, with intervals of peace, had made
+the Norman invader king over all England.&nbsp; He had won the kingdom;
+he had now to keep it.&nbsp; He had for seventeen years to deal with
+revolts on both sides of the sea, with revolts both of Englishmen and
+of his own followers.&nbsp; But in England his power was never shaken;
+in England he never knew defeat.&nbsp; His English enemies he had subdued;
+the Danes were allowed to remain and in some sort to help in his work
+by plundering during the winter.&nbsp; The King now marched to the Salisbury
+of that day, the deeply fenced hill of Old Sarum.&nbsp; The men who
+had conquered England were reviewed in the great plain, and received
+their rewards.&nbsp; Some among them had by failures of duty during
+the winter marches lost their right to reward.&nbsp; Their punishment
+was to remain under arms forty days longer than their comrades.&nbsp;
+William could trust himself to the very mutineers whom he had picked
+out for punishment.&nbsp; He had now to begin his real reign; and the
+champion of the Church had before all things to reform the evil customs
+of the benighted islanders, and to give them shepherds of their souls
+who might guide them in the right way,</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX&mdash;THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND&mdash;1070-1086</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>England was now fully conquered, and William could for a moment sit
+down quietly to the rule of the kingdom that he had won.&nbsp; The time
+that immediately followed is spoken of as a time of comparative quiet,
+and of less oppression than the times either before or after.&nbsp;
+Before and after, warfare, on one side of the sea or the other, was
+the main business.&nbsp; Hitherto William has been winning his kingdom
+in arms.&nbsp; Afterwards he was more constantly called away to his
+foreign dominions, and his absence always led to greater oppression
+in England.&nbsp; Just now he had a moment of repose, when he could
+give his mind to the affairs of Church and State in England.&nbsp; Peace
+indeed was not quite unbroken.&nbsp; Events were tending to that famous
+revolt in the Fenland which is perhaps the best remembered part of William&rsquo;s
+reign.&nbsp; But even this movement was merely local, and did not seriously
+interfere with William&rsquo;s government.&nbsp; He was now striving
+to settle the land in peace, and to make his rule as little grievous
+to the conquered as might be.&nbsp; The harrying of Northumberland showed
+that he now shrank from no harshness that would serve his ends; but
+from mere purposeless oppression he was still free.&nbsp; Nor was he
+ever inclined to needless change or to that scorn of the conquered which
+meaner conquerors have often shown.&nbsp; He clearly wished both to
+change and to oppress as little as he could.&nbsp; This is a side of
+him which has been greatly misunderstood, largely through the book that
+passes for the History of Ingulf Abbot of Crowland.&nbsp; Ingulf was
+William&rsquo;s English secretary; a real history of his writing would
+be most precious.&nbsp; But the book that goes by his name is a forgery
+not older than the fourteenth century, and is in all points contradicted
+by the genuine documents of the time.&nbsp; Thus the forger makes William
+try to abolish the English language and order the use of French in legal
+writings.&nbsp; This is pure fiction.&nbsp; The truth is that, from
+the time of William&rsquo;s coming, English goes out of use in legal
+writings, but only gradually, and not in favour of French.&nbsp; Ever
+since the coming of Augustine, English and Latin had been alternative
+tongues; after the coming of William English becomes less usual, and
+in the course of the twelfth century it goes out of use in favour of
+Latin.&nbsp; There are no French documents till the thirteenth century,
+and in that century English begins again.&nbsp; Instead of abolishing
+the English tongue, William took care that his English-born son should
+learn it, and he even began to learn it himself.&nbsp; A king of those
+days held it for his duty to hear and redress his subjects&rsquo; complaints;
+he had to go through the land and see for himself that those who acted
+in his name did right among his people.&nbsp; This earlier kings had
+done; this William wished to do; but he found his ignorance of English
+a hindrance.&nbsp; Cares of other kinds checked his English studies,
+but he may have learned enough to understand the meaning of his own
+English charters.&nbsp; Nor did William try, as he is often imagined
+to have done, to root out the ancient institutions of England, and to
+set up in their stead either the existing institutions of Normandy or
+some new institutions of his own devising.&nbsp; The truth is that with
+William began a gradual change in the laws and customs of England, undoubtedly
+great, but far less than is commonly thought.&nbsp; French names have
+often supplanted English, and have made the amount of change seem greater
+than it really was.&nbsp; Still much change did follow on the Norman
+Conquest, and the Norman Conquest was so completely William&rsquo;s
+own act that all that came of it was in some sort his act also.&nbsp;
+But these changes were mainly the gradual results of the state of things
+which followed William&rsquo;s coming; they were but very slightly the
+results of any formal acts of his.&nbsp; With a foreign king and foreigners
+in all high places, much practical change could not fail to follow,
+even where the letter of the law was unchanged.&nbsp; Still the practical
+change was less than if the letter of the law had been changed as well.&nbsp;
+English law was administered by foreign judges; the foreign grantees
+of William held English land according to English law.&nbsp; The Norman
+had no special position as a Norman; in every rank except perhaps the
+very highest and the very lowest, he had Englishmen to his fellows.&nbsp;
+All this helped to give the Norman Conquest of England its peculiar
+character, to give it an air of having swept away everything English,
+while its real work was to turn strangers into Englishmen.&nbsp; And
+that character was impressed on William&rsquo;s work by William himself.&nbsp;
+The king claiming by legal right, but driven to assert his right by
+the sword, was unlike both the foreign king who comes in by peaceful
+succession and the foreign king who comes in without even the pretext
+of law.&nbsp; The Normans too, if born soldiers, were also born lawyers,
+and no man was more deeply impressed with the legal spirit than William
+himself.&nbsp; He loved neither to change the law nor to transgress
+the law, and he had little need to do either.&nbsp; He knew how to make
+the law his instrument, and, without either changing or transgressing
+it, to use it to make himself all-powerful.&nbsp; He thoroughly enjoyed
+that system of legal fictions and official euphemisms which marks his
+reign.&nbsp; William himself became in some sort an Englishman, and
+those to whom he granted English lands had in some sort to become Englishmen
+in order to hold them.&nbsp; The Norman stepped into the exact place
+of the Englishman whose land he held; he took his rights and his burthens,
+and disputes about those rights and burthens were judged according to
+English law by the witness of Englishmen.&nbsp; Reigning over two races
+in one land, William would be lord of both alike, able to use either
+against the other in case of need.&nbsp; He would make the most of everything
+in the feelings and customs of either that tended to strengthen his
+own hands.&nbsp; And, in the state of things in which men then found
+themselves, whatever strengthened William&rsquo;s hands strengthened
+law and order in his kingdom.</p>
+<p>There was therefore nothing to lead William to make any large changes
+in the letter of the English law.&nbsp; The powers of a King of the
+English, wielded as he knew how to wield them, made him as great as
+he could wish to be.&nbsp; Once granting the original wrong of his coming
+at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly
+little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror.&nbsp; Of bloodshed, of
+wanton interference with law and usage, there is wonderfully little.&nbsp;
+Englishmen and Normans were held to have settled down in peace under
+the equal protection of King William.&nbsp; The two races were drawing
+together; the process was beginning which, a hundred years later, made
+it impossible, in any rank but the highest and the lowest, to distinguish
+Norman from Englishman.&nbsp; Among the smaller landowners and the townsfolk
+this intermingling had already begun, while earls and bishops were not
+yet so exclusively Norman, nor had the free churls of England as yet
+sunk so low as at a later stage.&nbsp; Still some legislation was needed
+to settle the relations of the two races.&nbsp; King William proclaimed
+the &ldquo;renewal of the law of King Edward.&rdquo;&nbsp; This phrase
+has often been misunderstood; it is a common form when peace and good
+order are restored after a period of disturbance.&nbsp; The last reign
+which is looked back to as to a time of good government becomes the
+standard of good government, and it is agreed between king and people,
+between contending races or parties, that things shall be as they were
+in the days of the model ruler.&nbsp; So we hear in Normandy of the
+renewal of the law of Rolf, and in England of the renewal of the law
+of Cnut.&nbsp; So at an earlier time Danes and Englishmen agreed in
+the renewal of the law of Edgar.&nbsp; So now Normans and Englishmen
+agreed in the renewal of the law of Edward.&nbsp; There was no code
+either of Edward&rsquo;s or of William&rsquo;s making.&nbsp; William
+simply bound himself to rule as Edward had ruled.&nbsp; But in restoring
+the law of King Edward, he added, &ldquo;with the additions which I
+have decreed for the advantage of the people of the English.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These few words are indeed weighty.&nbsp; The little legislation
+of William&rsquo;s reign takes throughout the shape of additions.&nbsp;
+Nothing old is repealed; a few new enactments are set up by the side
+of the old ones.&nbsp; And these words describe, not only William&rsquo;s
+actual legislation, but the widest general effect of his coming.&nbsp;
+The Norman Conquest did little towards any direct abolition of the older
+English laws or institutions.&nbsp; But it set up some new institutions
+alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a few names, habits, and
+ways of looking at things, which gradually did their work.&nbsp; In
+England no man has pulled down; many have added and modified.&nbsp;
+Our law is still the law of King Edward with the additions of King William.&nbsp;
+Some old institutions took new names; some new institutions with new
+names sprang up by the side of old ones.&nbsp; Sometimes the old has
+lasted, sometimes the new.&nbsp; We still have a <i>king</i> and not
+a <i>roy</i>; but he gathers round him a <i>parliament</i> and not a
+<i>vitenagem&oacute;t</i>.&nbsp; We have a <i>sheriff</i> and not a
+<i>viscount</i>; but his district is more commonly called a <i>county</i>
+than a <i>shire</i>.&nbsp; But <i>county</i> and <i>shire</i> are French
+and English for the same thing, and &ldquo;parliament&rdquo; is simply
+French for the &ldquo;deep speech&rdquo; which King William had with
+his Witan.&nbsp; The National Assembly of England has changed its name
+and its constitution more than once; but it has never been changed by
+any sudden revolution, never till later times by any formal enactment.&nbsp;
+There was no moment when one kind of assembly supplanted another.&nbsp;
+And this has come because our Conqueror was, both by his disposition
+and his circumstances, led to act as a preserver and not as a destroyer.</p>
+<p>The greatest recorded acts of William, administrative and legislative,
+come in the last days of his reign.&nbsp; But there are several enactments
+of William belonging to various periods of his reign, and some of them
+to this first moment of peace.&nbsp; Here we distinctly see William
+as an English statesman, as a statesman who knew how to work a radical
+change under conservative forms.&nbsp; One enactment, perhaps the earliest
+of all, provided for the safety of the strangers who had come with him
+to subdue and to settle in the land.&nbsp; The murder of a Norman by
+an Englishman, especially of a Norman intruder by a dispossessed Englishman,
+was a thing that doubtless often happened.&nbsp; William therefore provides
+for the safety of those whom he calls &ldquo;the men whom I brought
+with me or who have come after me;&rdquo; that is, the warriors of Senlac,
+Exeter, and York.&nbsp; These men are put within his own peace; wrong
+done to them is wrong done to the King, his crown and dignity.&nbsp;
+If the murderer cannot be found, the lord and, failing him, the hundred,
+must make payment to the King.&nbsp; Of this grew the presentment of
+<i>Englishry</i>, one of the few formal badges of distinction between
+the conquering and the conquered race.&nbsp; Its practical need could
+not have lasted beyond a generation or two, but it went on as a form
+ages after it had lost all meaning.&nbsp; An unknown corpse, unless
+it could be proved that the dead man was English, was assumed to be
+that of a man who had come with King William, and the fine was levied.&nbsp;
+Some other enactments were needed when two nations lived side by side
+in the same land.&nbsp; As in earlier times, Roman and barbarian each
+kept his own law, so now for some purposes the Frenchman&mdash;&ldquo;Francigena&rdquo;&mdash;and
+the Englishman kept their own law.&nbsp; This is chiefly with regard
+to the modes of appealing to God&rsquo;s judgement in doubtful cases.&nbsp;
+The English did this by ordeal, the Normans by wager of battle.&nbsp;
+When a man of one nation appealed a man of the other, the accused chose
+the mode of trial.&nbsp; If an Englishman appealed a Frenchman and declined
+to prove his charge either way, the Frenchman might clear himself by
+oath.&nbsp; But these privileges were strictly confined to Frenchmen
+who had come with William and after him.&nbsp; Frenchmen who had in
+Edward&rsquo;s time settled in England as the land of their own choice,
+reckoned as Englishmen.&nbsp; Other enactments, fresh enactments of
+older laws, touched both races.&nbsp; The slave trade was rife in its
+worst form; men were sold out of the land, chiefly to the Danes of Ireland.&nbsp;
+Earlier kings had denounced the crime, and earlier bishops had preached
+against it.&nbsp; William denounced it again under the penalty of forfeiture
+of all lands and goods, and Saint Wulfstan, the Bishop of Worcester,
+persuaded the chief offenders, Englishmen of Bristol, to give up their
+darling sin for a season.&nbsp; Yet in the next reign Anselm and his
+synod had once more to denounce the crime under spiritual penalties,
+when they had no longer the strong arm of William to enforce them.</p>
+<p>Another law bears more than all the personal impress of William.&nbsp;
+In it he at once, on one side, forestalls the most humane theories of
+modern times, and on the other sins most directly against them.&nbsp;
+His remarkable unwillingness to put any man to death, except among the
+chances of the battle-field, was to some extent the feeling of his age.&nbsp;
+With him the feeling takes the shape of a formal law.&nbsp; He forbids
+the infliction of death for any crime whatever.&nbsp; But those who
+may on this score be disposed to claim the Conqueror as a sympathizer
+will be shocked at the next enactment.&nbsp; Those crimes which kings
+less merciful than William would have punished with death are to be
+punished with loss of eyes or other foul and cruel mutilations.&nbsp;
+Punishments of this kind now seem more revolting than death, though
+possibly, now as then, the sufferer himself might think otherwise.&nbsp;
+But in those days to substitute mutilation for death, in the case of
+crimes which were held to deserve death, was universally deemed an act
+of mercy.&nbsp; Grave men shrank from sending their fellow-creatures
+out of the world, perhaps without time for repentance; but physical
+sympathy with physical suffering had little place in their minds.&nbsp;
+In the next century a feeling against bodily mutilation gradually comes
+in; but as yet the mildest and most thoughtful men, Anselm himself,
+make no protest against it when it is believed to be really deserved.&nbsp;
+There is no sign of any general complaint on this score.&nbsp; The English
+Chronicler applauds the strict police of which mutilation formed a part,
+and in one case he deliberately holds it to be the fitting punishment
+of the offence.&nbsp; In fact, when penal settlements were unknown and
+legal prisons were few and loathsome, there was something to be said
+for a punishment which disabled the criminal from repeating his offence.&nbsp;
+In William&rsquo;s jurisprudence mutilation became the ordinary sentence
+of the murderer, the robber, the ravisher, sometimes also of English
+revolters against William&rsquo;s power.&nbsp; We must in short balance
+his mercy against the mercy of Kirk and Jeffreys.</p>
+<p>The ground on which the English Chronicler does raise his wail on
+behalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the forests
+and the extortions of money with which he charges the Conqueror.&nbsp;
+In both these points the royal hand became far heavier under the Norman
+rule.&nbsp; In both William&rsquo;s character grew darker as he grew
+older.&nbsp; He is charged with unlawful exactions of money, in his
+character alike of sovereign and of landlord.&nbsp; We read of his sharp
+practice in dealing with the profits of the royal demesnes.&nbsp; He
+would turn out the tenant to whom he had just let the land, if another
+offered a higher rent.&nbsp; But with regard to taxation, we must remember
+that William&rsquo;s exactions, however heavy at the time, were a step
+in the direction of regular government.&nbsp; In those days all taxation
+was disliked.&nbsp; Direct taking of the subject&rsquo;s money by the
+King was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified only by some
+extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hire soldiers against
+them.&nbsp; Men long after still dreamed that the King could &ldquo;live
+of his own,&rdquo; that he could pay all expenses of his court and government
+out of the rents and services due to him as a landowner, without asking
+his people for anything in the character of sovereign.&nbsp; Demands
+of money on behalf of the King now became both heavier and more frequent.&nbsp;
+And another change which had long been gradually working now came to
+a head.&nbsp; When, centuries later, the King was bidden to &ldquo;live
+of his own,&rdquo; men had forgotten that the land of the King had once
+been the land of the nation.&nbsp; In all Teutonic communities, great
+and small, just as in the city communities of Greece and Italy, the
+community itself was a chief landowner.&nbsp; The nation had its <i>folkland</i>,
+its <i>ager publicus</i>, the property of no one man but of the whole
+state.&nbsp; Out of this, by the common consent, portions might be cut
+off and <i>booked&mdash;</i>granted by a written document&mdash;to particular
+men as their own <i>bookland</i>.&nbsp; The King might have his private
+estate, to be dealt with at his own pleasure, but of the <i>folkland</i>,
+the land of the nation, he was only the chief administrator, bound to
+act by the advice of his Witan.&nbsp; But in this case more than in
+others, the advice of the Witan could not fail to become formal; the
+<i>folkland</i>, ever growing through confiscations, ever lessening
+through grants, gradually came to be looked on as the land of the King,
+to be dealt with as he thought good.&nbsp; We must not look for any
+change formally enacted; but in Edward&rsquo;s day the notion of <i>folkland</i>,
+as the possession of the nation and not of the King, could have been
+only a survival, and in William&rsquo;s day even the survival passed
+away.&nbsp; The land which was practically the land of King Edward became,
+as a matter of course, <i>Terra Regis</i>, the land of King William.&nbsp;
+That land was now enlarged by greater confiscations and lessened by
+greater grants than ever.&nbsp; For a moment, every lay estate had been
+part of the land of William.&nbsp; And far more than had been the land
+of the nation remained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he
+thought good.</p>
+<p>In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change.&nbsp;
+But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to certain
+tendencies which had been long afloat.&nbsp; And out of them, in the
+next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a systematic
+code of oppression.&nbsp; Yet even in his work there is little of formal
+change.&nbsp; There are no laws of William Rufus.&nbsp; The so called
+feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and the like, on
+the part of the lord, the ancient <i>heriot</i> developed into the later
+<i>relief</i>, all these things were in the germ under William, as they
+had been in the germ long before him.&nbsp; In the hands of Randolf
+Flambard they stiffen into established custom; their legal acknowledgement
+comes from the charter of Henry the First which promises to reform their
+abuses.&nbsp; Thus the Conqueror clearly claimed the right to interfere
+with the marriages of his nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to
+which he objected on grounds of policy.&nbsp; Under Randolf Flambard
+this became a regular claim, which of course was made a means of extorting
+money.&nbsp; Under Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by
+being regulated and modified, it is legally established.</p>
+<p>The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William,
+greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at all
+changed in outward form.&nbsp; Like the kings that were before him,
+he &ldquo;wore his crown&rdquo; at the three great feasts, at Easter
+at Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at Gloucester.&nbsp;
+Like the kings that were before him, he gathered together the great
+men of the realm, and when need was, the small men also.&nbsp; Nothing
+seems to have been changed in the constitution or the powers of the
+assembly; but its spirit must have been utterly changed.&nbsp; The innermost
+circle, earls, bishops, great officers of state and household, gradually
+changed from a body of Englishmen with a few strangers among them into
+a body of strangers among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their
+places.&nbsp; The result of their &ldquo;deep speech&rdquo; with William
+was not likely to be other than an assent to William&rsquo;s will.&nbsp;
+The ordinary freeman did not lose his abstract right to come and shout
+&ldquo;Yea, yea,&rdquo; to any addition that King William made to the
+law of King Edward.&nbsp; But there would be nothing to tempt him to
+come, unless King William thought fit to bid him.&nbsp; But once at
+least William did gather together, if not every freeman, at least all
+freeholders of the smallest account.&nbsp; On one point the Conqueror
+had fully made up his mind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to
+his kingdom through all succeeding ages.&nbsp; The realm of England
+was to be one and indivisible.&nbsp; No ruler or subject in the kingdom
+of England should again dream that that kingdom could be split asunder.&nbsp;
+When he offered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part
+of it, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offer
+would be refused.&nbsp; No such offer should be heard of again.&nbsp;
+There should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund,
+between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere had
+dreamed of in later times.&nbsp; Nor should the kingdom be split asunder
+in that subtler way which William of all men best understood, the way
+in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had split asunder.&nbsp;
+He would have no dukes or earls who might become kings in all but name,
+each in his own duchy or earldom.&nbsp; No man in his realm should be
+to him as he was to his overlord at Paris.&nbsp; No man in his realm
+should plead duty towards an immediate lord as an excuse for breach
+of duty towards the lord of that immediate lord.&nbsp; Hence William&rsquo;s
+policy with regard to earldoms.&nbsp; There was to be nothing like the
+great governments which had been held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward;
+an Earl of the West-Saxons or the Northumbrians was too like a Duke
+of the Normans to be endured by one who was Duke of the Normans himself.&nbsp;
+The earl, even of the king&rsquo;s appointment, still represented the
+separate being of the district over which he was set.&nbsp; He was the
+king&rsquo;s representative rather than merely his officer; if he was
+a magistrate and not a prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes,
+and might easily grow into a prince.&nbsp; And at last, at the very
+end of his reign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step
+that made England for ever one.&nbsp; In 1086 every land-owner in England
+swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and
+to defend him against his enemies.&nbsp; The subject&rsquo;s duty to
+the King was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior
+lord.&nbsp; When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly
+government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of both.&nbsp;
+Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an English
+statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards the later
+making of England, than this memorable act of the Conqueror.&nbsp; Here
+indeed is an addition which William made to the law of Edward for the
+truest good of the English folk.&nbsp; And yet no enactment has ever
+been more thoroughly misunderstood.&nbsp; Lawyer after lawyer has set
+down in his book that, at the assembly of Salisbury in 1086, William
+introduced &ldquo;the feudal system.&rdquo;&nbsp; If the words &ldquo;feudal
+system&rdquo; have any meaning, the object of the law now made was to
+hinder any &ldquo;feudal system&rdquo; from coming into England.&nbsp;
+William would be king of a kingdom, head of a commonwealth, personal
+lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a King of the French,
+external lord of princes whose subjects owed him no allegiance.&nbsp;
+This greatest monument of the Conqueror&rsquo;s statesmanship was carried
+into effect in a special assembly of the English nation gathered on
+the first day of August 1086 on the great plain of Salisbury.&nbsp;
+Now, perhaps for the first time, we get a distinct foreshadowing of
+Lords and Commons.&nbsp; The Witan, the great men of the realm, and
+&ldquo;the landsitting men,&rdquo; the whole body of landowners, are
+now distinguished.&nbsp; The point is that William required the personal
+presence of every man whose personal allegiance he thought worth having.&nbsp;
+Every man in the mixed assembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the
+King&rsquo;s own men and the men of other lords, took the oath and became
+the man of King William.&nbsp; On that day England became for ever a
+kingdom one and indivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed
+of parting asunder.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of William&rsquo;s
+later reign; it comes here as the last act of that general settlement
+which began in 1070.&nbsp; That settlement, besides its secular side,
+has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat different character.&nbsp;
+In both William&rsquo;s coming brought the island kingdom into a closer
+connexion with the continent; and brought a large displacement of Englishmen
+and a large promotion of strangers.&nbsp; But on the ecclesiastical
+side, though the changes were less violent, there was a more marked
+beginning of a new state of things.&nbsp; The religious missionary was
+more inclined to innovate than the military conqueror.&nbsp; Here William
+not only added but changed; on one point he even proclaimed that the
+existing law of England was bad.&nbsp; Certainly the religious state
+of England was likely to displease churchmen from the mainland.&nbsp;
+The English Church, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that
+very reason, less dependent on her parent.&nbsp; She was a free colony,
+not a conquered province.&nbsp; The English Church too was most distinctly
+national; no land came so near to that ideal state of things in which
+the Church is the nation on its religious side.&nbsp; Papal authority
+therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a less careful line
+was drawn between spiritual and temporal things and jurisdictions.&nbsp;
+Two friendly powers could take liberties with each other.&nbsp; The
+national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as well as with temporal
+matters; one indeed among our ancient laws blames any assembly that
+did otherwise.&nbsp; Bishop and earl sat together in the local <i>Gem&oacute;t</i>,
+to deal with many matters which, according to continental ideas, should
+have been dealt with in separate courts.&nbsp; And, by what in continental
+eyes seemed a strange laxity of discipline, priests, bishops, members
+of capitular bodies, were often married.&nbsp; The English diocesan
+arrangements were unlike continental models.&nbsp; In Gaul, by a tradition
+of Roman date, the bishop was bishop of the city.&nbsp; His diocese
+was marked by the extent of the civil jurisdiction of the city.&nbsp;
+His home, his head church, his <i>bishopstool</i> in the head church,
+were all in the city.&nbsp; In Teutonic England the bishop was commonly
+bishop, not of a city but of a tribe or district; his style was that
+of a tribe; his home, his head church, his bishopstool, might be anywhere
+within the territory of that tribe.&nbsp; Still, on the greatest point
+of all, matters in England were thoroughly to William&rsquo;s liking;
+nowhere did the King stand forth more distinctly as the Supreme Governor
+of the Church.&nbsp; In England, as in Normandy, the right of the sovereign
+to the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was ancient and undisputed.&nbsp;
+What Edward had freely done, William went on freely doing, and Hildebrand
+himself never ventured on a word of remonstrance against a power which
+he deemed so wrongful in the hands of his own sovereign.&nbsp; William
+had but to stand on the rights of his predecessors.&nbsp; When Gregory
+asked for homage for the crown which he had in some sort given, William
+answered indeed as an English king.&nbsp; What the kings before him
+had done for or paid to the Roman see, that would he do and pay; but
+this no king before him had ever done, nor would he be the first to
+do it.&nbsp; But while William thus maintained the rights of his crown,
+he was willing and eager to do all that seemed needful for ecclesiastical
+reform.&nbsp; And the general result of his reform was to weaken the
+insular independence of England, to make her Church more like the other
+Churches of the West, and to increase the power of the Roman Bishop.</p>
+<p>William had now a fellow-worker in his taste.&nbsp; The subtle spirit
+which had helped to win his kingdom was now at his side to help him
+to rule it.&nbsp; Within a few months after the taking of Chester Lanfranc
+sat on the throne of Augustine.&nbsp; As soon as the actual Conquest
+was over, William began to give his mind to ecclesiastical matters.&nbsp;
+It might look like sacrilege when he caused all the monasteries of England
+to be harried.&nbsp; But no harm was done to the monks or to their possessions.&nbsp;
+The holy houses were searched for the hoards which the rich men of England,
+fearing the new king, had laid up in the monastic treasuries.&nbsp;
+William looked on these hoards as part of the forfeited goods of rebels,
+and carried them off during the Lent of 1070.&nbsp; This done, he sat
+steadily down to the reform of the English Church.</p>
+<p>He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid,
+Bishop of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time of Edward.&nbsp;
+It was a kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest, when, at the assembly
+held at Winchester in 1070, the King&rsquo;s crown was placed on his
+head by Ermenfrid.&nbsp; The work of deposing English prelates and appointing
+foreign successors now began.&nbsp; The primacy of York was regularly
+vacant; Ealdred had died as the Danes sailed up the Humber to assault
+or to deliver his city.&nbsp; The primacy of Canterbury was to be made
+vacant by the deposition of Stigand.&nbsp; His canonical position had
+always been doubtful; neither Harold nor William had been crowned by
+him; yet William had treated him hitherto with marked courtesy, and
+he had consecrated at least one Norman bishop, Remigius of Dorchester.&nbsp;
+He was now deprived both of the archbishopric and of the bishopric of
+Winchester which he held with it, and was kept under restraint for the
+rest of his life.&nbsp; According to foreign canonical rules the sentence
+may pass as just; but it marked a stage in the conquest of England when
+a stout-hearted Englishman was removed from the highest place in the
+English Church to make way for the innermost counsellor of the Conqueror.&nbsp;
+In the Pentecostal assembly, held at Windsor, Lanfranc was appointed
+archbishop; his excuses were overcome by his old master Herlwin of Bec;
+he came to England, and on August 15, 1070 he was consecrated to the
+primacy.</p>
+<p>Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies.&nbsp;
+The see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man of high
+character and memorable in the local history of his see.&nbsp; The abbey
+of Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who had received the
+staff from the uncrowned Eadgar.&nbsp; It was only by rich gifts that
+he had turned away the wrath of William from his house.&nbsp; The Fenland
+was perhaps already stirring, and the Abbot of Peterborough might have
+to act as a military commander.&nbsp; In this case the prelate appointed,
+a Norman named Turold, was accordingly more of a soldier than of a monk.&nbsp;
+From these assemblies of 1070 the series of William&rsquo;s ecclesiastical
+changes goes on.&nbsp; As the English bishops die or are deprived, strangers
+take their place.&nbsp; They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who
+became Bishop of Durham in 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine
+who had been largely favoured in Edward&rsquo;s day.&nbsp; At the time
+of William&rsquo;s death Wulfstan was the only Englishman who kept a
+bishopric.&nbsp; Even his deprivation had once been thought of.&nbsp;
+The story takes a legendary shape, but it throws an important light
+on the relations of Church and State in England.&nbsp; In an assembly
+held in the West Minster Wulfstan is called on by William and Lanfranc
+to give up his staff.&nbsp; He refuses; he will give it back to him
+who gave it, and places it on the tomb of his dead master Edward.&nbsp;
+No of his enemies can move it.&nbsp; The sentence is recalled, and the
+staff yields to his touch.&nbsp; Edward was not yet a canonized saint;
+the appeal is simply from the living and foreign king to the dead and
+native king.&nbsp; This legend, growing up when Western Europe was torn
+in pieces by the struggle about investitures, proves better than the
+most authentic documents how the right which Popes denied to Emperors
+was taken for granted in the case of an English king.&nbsp; But, while
+the spoils of England, temporal and spiritual, were thus scattered abroad
+among men of the conquering race, two men at least among them refused
+all share in plunder which they deemed unrighteous.&nbsp; One gallant
+Norman knight, Gulbert of Hugleville, followed William through all his
+campaigns, but when English estates were offered as his reward, he refused
+to share in unrighteous gains, and went back to the lands of his fathers
+which he could hold with a good conscience.&nbsp; And one monk, Wimund
+of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused bishoprics and abbeys, but rebuked
+the Conqueror for wrong and robbery.&nbsp; And William bore no grudge
+against his censor, but, when the archbishopric of Rouen became vacant,
+he offered it to the man who had rebuked him.&nbsp; Among the worthies
+of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly claim a place, but a place
+should surely be theirs among the men whom England honours.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in our history.&nbsp;
+In the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in the next reign, the
+plough of the English Church was for seventeen years drawn by two oxen
+of equal strength.&nbsp; By ancient English custom the Archbishop of
+Canterbury was the King&rsquo;s special counsellor, the special representative
+of his Church and people.&nbsp; Lanfranc cannot be charged with any
+direct oppression; yet in the hands of a stranger who had his spiritual
+conquest to make, the tribunitian office of former archbishops was lost
+in that of chief minister of the sovereign.&nbsp; In the first action
+of their joint rule, the interest of king and primate was the same.&nbsp;
+Lanfranc sought for a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority
+of Canterbury over the rival metropolis of York.&nbsp; And this fell
+in with William&rsquo;s schemes for the consolidation of the kingdom.&nbsp;
+The political motive is avowed.&nbsp; Northumberland, which had been
+so hard to subdue and which still lay open to Danish invaders or deliverers,
+was still dangerous.&nbsp; An independent Archbishop of York might consecrate
+a King of the Northumbrians, native or Danish, who might grow into a
+King of the English.&nbsp; The Northern metropolitan had unwillingly
+to admit the superiority, and something more, of the Southern.&nbsp;
+The caution of William and his ecclesiastical adviser reckoned it among
+possible chances that even Thomas of Bayeux might crown an invading
+Cnut or Harold in opposition to his native sovereign and benefactor.</p>
+<p>For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his minister
+too wisely.&nbsp; The objects of the two colleagues were not always
+the same.&nbsp; Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was no zealot
+for extravagant papal claims.&nbsp; The caution with which he bore himself
+during the schism which followed the strife between Gregory and Henry
+brought on him more than one papal censure.&nbsp; Yet the general tendency
+of his administration was towards the growth of ecclesiastical, and
+even of papal, claims.&nbsp; William never dreamed of giving up his
+ecclesiastical supremacy or of exempting churchmen from the ordinary
+power of the law.&nbsp; But the division of the civil and ecclesiastical
+jurisdiction, the increased frequency of synods distinct from the general
+assemblies of the realm&mdash;even though the acts of those synods needed
+the royal assent&mdash;were steps towards that exemption of churchmen
+from the civil power which was asserted in one memorable saying towards
+the end of William&rsquo;s own reign.&nbsp; William could hold his own
+against Hildebrand himself; yet the increased intercourse with Rome,
+the more frequent presence of Roman Legates, all tended to increase
+the papal claims and the deference yielded to them.&nbsp; William refused
+homage to Gregory; but it is significant that Gregory asked for it.&nbsp;
+It was a step towards the day when a King of England was glad to offer
+it.&nbsp; The increased strictness as to the marriage of the clergy
+tended the same way.&nbsp; Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full
+rigour of Hildebrand&rsquo;s decrees.&nbsp; Marriage was forbidden for
+the future; the capitular clergy had to part from their wives; but the
+vested interest of the parish priest was respected.&nbsp; In another
+point William directly helped to undermine his own authority and the
+independence of his kingdom.&nbsp; He exempted his abbey of the Battle
+from the authority of the diocesan bishop.&nbsp; With this began a crowd
+of such exemptions, which, by weakening local authority, strengthened
+the power of the Roman see.&nbsp; All these things helped on Hildebrand&rsquo;s
+great scheme which made the clergy everywhere members of one distinct
+and exclusive body, with the Roman Bishop at their head.&nbsp; Whatever
+tended to part the clergy from other men tended to weaken the throne
+of every king.&nbsp; While William reigned with Lanfranc at his side,
+these things were not felt; but the seed was sown for the controversy
+between Henry and Thomas and for the humiliation of John.</p>
+<p>Even those changes of Lanfranc&rsquo;s primacy which seem of purely
+ecclesiastical concern all helped, in some way to increase the intercourse
+between England and the continent or to break down some insular peculiarity.&nbsp;
+And whatever did this increased the power of Rome.&nbsp; Even the decree
+of 1075 that bishoprics should be removed to the chief cities of their
+dioceses helped to make England more like Gaul or Italy.&nbsp; So did
+the fancy of William&rsquo;s bishops and abbots for rebuilding their
+churches on a greater scale and in the last devised continental style.&nbsp;
+All tended to make England less of another world.&nbsp; On the other
+hand, one insular peculiarity well served the purposes of the new primate.&nbsp;
+Monastic chapters in episcopal churches were almost unknown out of England.&nbsp;
+Lanfranc, himself a monk, favoured monks in this matter also.&nbsp;
+In several churches the secular canons were displaced by monks.&nbsp;
+The corporate spirit of the regulars, and their dependence on Rome,
+was far stronger than that of the secular clergy.&nbsp; The secular
+chapters could be refractory, but the disputes between them and their
+bishops were mainly of local importance; they form no such part of the
+general story of ecclesiastical and papal advance as the long tale of
+the quarrel between the archbishops and the monks of Christ Church.</p>
+<p>Lanfranc survived William, and placed the crown on the head of his
+successor.&nbsp; The friendship between king and archbishop remained
+unbroken through their joint lives.&nbsp; Lanfranc&rsquo;s acts were
+William&rsquo;s acts; what the Primate did must have been approved by
+the King.&nbsp; How far William&rsquo;s acts were Lanfranc&rsquo;s acts
+it is less easy to say.&nbsp; But the Archbishop was ever a trusted
+minister, and a trusted counsellor, and in the King&rsquo;s frequent
+absences from England, he often acted as his lieutenant.&nbsp; We do
+not find him actually taking a part in warfare, but he duly reports
+military successes to his sovereign.&nbsp; It was William&rsquo;s combined
+wisdom and good luck to provide himself with a counsellor than whom
+for his immediate purposes none could be better.&nbsp; A man either
+of a higher or a lower moral level than Lanfranc, a saint like Anselm
+or one of the mere worldly bishops of the time, would not have done
+his work so well.&nbsp; William needed an ecclesiastical statesman,
+neither unscrupulous nor over-scrupulous, and he found him in the lawyer
+of Pavia, the doctor of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the abbot of Saint
+Stephen&rsquo;s.&nbsp; If Lanfranc sometimes unwittingly outwitted both
+his master and himself, if his policy served the purposes of Rome more
+than suited the purposes of either, that is the common course of human
+affairs.&nbsp; Great men are apt to forget that systems which they can
+work themselves cannot be worked by smaller men.&nbsp; From this error
+neither William nor Lanfranc was free.&nbsp; But, from their own point
+of view, it was their only error.&nbsp; Their work was to subdue England,
+soul and body; and they subdued it.&nbsp; That work could not be done
+without great wrong: but no other two men of that day could have done
+it with so little wrong.&nbsp; The shrinking from needless and violent
+change which is so strongly characteristic of William, and less strongly
+of Lanfranc also, made their work at the time easier to be done; in
+the course of ages it made it easier to be undone.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER X&mdash;THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM&mdash;1070-1086</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The years which saw the settlement of England, though not years of
+constant fighting like the two years between the march to Exeter and
+the fall of Chester, were not years of perfect peace.&nbsp; William
+had to withstand foes on both sides of the sea, to withstand foes in
+his own household, to undergo his first defeat, to receive his first
+wound in personal conflict.&nbsp; Nothing shook his firm hold either
+on duchy or kingdom; but in his later years his good luck forsook him.&nbsp;
+And men did not fail to connect this change in his future with a change
+in himself, above all with one deed of blood which stands out as utterly
+unlike all his other recorded acts.</p>
+<p>But the amount of warfare which William had to go through in these
+later years was small compared with the great struggles of his earlier
+days.&nbsp; There is no tale to tell like the war of Val-&egrave;s-dunes,
+like the French invasions of Normandy, like the campaigns that won England.&nbsp;
+One event only of the earlier time is repeated almost as exactly as
+an event can be repeated.&nbsp; William had won Maine once; he had now
+to win it again, and less thoroughly.&nbsp; As Conqueror his work is
+done; a single expedition into Wales is the only campaign of this part
+of his life that led to any increase of territory.</p>
+<p>When William sat down to the settlement of his kingdom after the
+fall of Chester, he was in the strictest sense full king over all England.&nbsp;
+For the moment the whole land obeyed him; at no later moment did any
+large part of the land fail to obey him.&nbsp; All opposition was now
+revolt.&nbsp; Men were no longer keeping out an invader; when they rose,
+they rose against a power which, however wrongfully, was the established
+government of the land.&nbsp; Two such movements took place.&nbsp; One
+was a real revolt of Englishmen against foreign rule.&nbsp; The other
+was a rebellion of William&rsquo;s own earls in their own interests,
+in which English feeling went with the King.&nbsp; Both were short sharp
+struggles which stand out boldly in the tale.&nbsp; More important in
+the general story, though less striking in detail, are the relations
+of William to the other powers in and near the isle of Britain.&nbsp;
+With the crown of the West-Saxon kings, he had taken up their claims
+to supremacy over the whole island, and probably beyond it.&nbsp; And
+even without such claims, border warfare with his Welsh and Scottish
+neighbours could not be avoided.&nbsp; Counting from the completion
+of the real conquest of England in 1070, there were in William&rsquo;s
+reign three distinct sources of disturbance.&nbsp; There were revolts
+within the kingdom of England.&nbsp; There was border warfare in Britain.&nbsp;
+There were revolts in William&rsquo;s continental dominions.&nbsp; And
+we may add actual foreign warfare or threats of foreign warfare, affecting
+William, sometimes in his Norman, sometimes in his English character.</p>
+<p>With the affairs of Wales William had little personally to do.&nbsp;
+In this he is unlike those who came immediately before and after him.&nbsp;
+In the lives of Harold and of William Rufus personal warfare against
+the Welsh forms an important part.&nbsp; William the Great commonly
+left this kind of work to the earls of the frontier, to Hugh of Chester,
+Roger of Shrewsbury, and to his early friend William of Hereford, so
+long as that fierce warrior&rsquo;s life lasted.&nbsp; These earls were
+ever at war with the Welsh princes, and they extended the English kingdom
+at their cost.&nbsp; Once only did the King take a personal share in
+the work, when he entered South Wales, in 1081.&nbsp; We hear vaguely
+of his subduing the land and founding castles; we see more distinctly
+that he released many subjects who were in British bondage, and that
+he went on a religious pilgrimage to Saint David&rsquo;s.&nbsp; This
+last journey is in some accounts connected with schemes for the conquest
+of Ireland.&nbsp; And in one most remarkable passage of the English
+Chronicle, the writer for once speculates as to what might have happened
+but did not.&nbsp; Had William lived two years longer, he would have
+won Ireland by his wisdom without weapons.&nbsp; And if William had
+won Ireland either by wisdom or by weapons, he would assuredly have
+known better how to deal with it than most of those who have come after
+him.&nbsp; If any man could have joined together the lands which God
+has put asunder, surely it was he.&nbsp; This mysterious saying must
+have a reference to some definite act or plan of which we have no other
+record.&nbsp; And some slight approach to the process of winning Ireland
+without weapons does appear in the ecclesiastical intercourse between
+England and Ireland which now begins.&nbsp; Both the native Irish princes
+and the Danes of the east coast begin to treat Lanfranc as their metropolitan,
+and to send bishops to him for consecration.&nbsp; The name of the King
+of the English is never mentioned in the letters which passed between
+the English primate and the kings and bishops of Ireland.&nbsp; It may
+be that William was biding his time for some act of special wisdom;
+but our speculations cannot go any further than those of the Peterborough
+Chronicler.</p>
+<p>Revolt within the kingdom and invasion from without both began in
+the year in which the Conquest was brought to an end.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+ecclesiastical reforms were interrupted by the revolt of the Fenland.&nbsp;
+William&rsquo;s authority had never been fully acknowledged in that
+corner of England, while he wore his crown and held his councils elsewhere.&nbsp;
+But the place where disturbances began, the abbey of Peterborough, was
+certainly in William&rsquo;s obedience.&nbsp; The warfare made memorable
+by the name of Hereward began in June 1070, and a Scottish harrying
+of Northern England, the second of five which are laid to the charge
+of Malcolm, took place in the same year, and most likely about the same
+time.&nbsp; The English movement is connected alike with the course
+of the Danish fleet and with the appointment of Turold to the abbey
+of Peterborough.&nbsp; William had bribed the Danish commanders to forsake
+their English allies, and he allowed them to ravage the coast.&nbsp;
+A later bribe took them back to Denmark; but not till they had shown
+themselves in the waters of Ely.&nbsp; The people, largely of Danish
+descent, flocked to them, thinking, as the Chronicler says, that they
+would win the whole land.&nbsp; The movement was doubtless in favour
+of the kingship of Swegen.&nbsp; But nothing was done by Danes and English
+together save to plunder Peterborough abbey.&nbsp; Hereward, said to
+have been the nephew of Turold&rsquo;s English predecessor, doubtless
+looked on the holy place, under a Norman abbot, as part of the enemy&rsquo;s
+country.</p>
+<p>The name of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction,
+old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real
+history.&nbsp; His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was
+assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric.&nbsp;
+For some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or
+of Harold.&nbsp; He now came back to lead his countrymen against William.&nbsp;
+He was the soul of the movement of which the abbey of Ely became the
+centre.&nbsp; The isle, then easily defensible, was the last English
+ground on which the Conqueror was defied by Englishmen fighting for
+England.&nbsp; The men of the Fenland were zealous; the monks of Ely
+were zealous; helpers came in from other parts of England.&nbsp; English
+leaders left their shelter in Scotland to share the dangers of their
+countrymen; even Edwin and Morkere at last plucked up heart to leave
+William&rsquo;s court and join the patriotic movement.&nbsp; Edwin was
+pursued; he was betrayed by traitors; he was overtaken and slain, to
+William&rsquo;s deep grief, we are told.&nbsp; His brother reached the
+isle, and helped in its defence.&nbsp; William now felt that the revolt
+called for his own presence and his full energies.&nbsp; The isle was
+stoutly attacked and stoutly defended, till, according to one version,
+the monks betrayed the stronghold to the King.&nbsp; According to another,
+Morkere was induced to surrender by promises of mercy which William
+failed to fulfil.&nbsp; In any case, before the year 1071 was ended,
+the isle of Ely was in William&rsquo;s hands.&nbsp; Hereward alone with
+a few companions made their way out by sea.&nbsp; William was less merciful
+than usual; still no man was put to death.&nbsp; Some were mutilated,
+some imprisoned; Morkere and other chief men spent the rest of their
+days in bonds.&nbsp; The temper of the Conqueror had now fearfully hardened.&nbsp;
+Still he could honour a valiant enemy; those who resisted to the last
+fared best.&nbsp; All the legends of Hereward&rsquo;s later days speak
+of him as admitted to William&rsquo;s peace and favour.&nbsp; One makes
+him die quietly, another kills him at the hands of Norman enemies, but
+not at William&rsquo;s bidding or with William&rsquo;s knowledge.&nbsp;
+Evidence a little better suggests that he bore arms for his new sovereign
+beyond the sea; and an entry in Domesday also suggests that he held
+lands under Count Robert of Mortain in Warwickshire.&nbsp; It would
+suit William&rsquo;s policy, when he received Hereward to his favour,
+to make him exchange lands near to the scene of his exploits for lands
+in a distant shire held under the lordship of the King&rsquo;s brother.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolm ravaged
+Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there must have been little
+left to ravage.&nbsp; Meanwhile the &AElig;theling Edgar and his sisters,
+with other English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland, and were hospitably
+received.&nbsp; At the same time Gospatric, now William&rsquo;s earl
+in Northumberland, retaliated by a harrying of Scottish Cumberland,
+which provoked Malcolm to greater cruelties.&nbsp; It was said that
+there was no house in Scotland so poor that it had not an English bondman.&nbsp;
+Presently some of Malcolm&rsquo;s English guests joined the defenders
+of Ely; those of highest birth stayed in Scotland, and Malcolm, after
+much striving, persuaded Margaret the sister of Edgar to become his
+wife.&nbsp; Her praises are written in Scottish history, and the marriage
+had no small share in the process which made the Scottish kings and
+the lands which formed their real kingdom practically English.&nbsp;
+The sons and grandsons of Margaret, sprung of the Old-English kingly
+house, were far more English within their own realm than the Norman
+and Angevin kings of Southern England.&nbsp; But within the English
+border men looked at things with other eyes.&nbsp; Thrice again did
+Malcolm ravage England; two and twenty years later he was slain in his
+last visit of havoc.&nbsp; William meanwhile and his earls at least
+drew to themselves some measure of loyalty from the men of Northern
+England as the guardians of the land against the Scot.</p>
+<p>For the present however Malcolm&rsquo;s invasion was only avenged
+by Gospatric&rsquo;s harrying in Cumberland.&nbsp; The year 1071 called
+William to Ely; in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed
+on the mainland; in August he found leisure for a march against Scotland.&nbsp;
+He went as an English king, to assert the rights of the English crown,
+to avenge wrongs done to the English land; and on such an errand Englishmen
+followed him gladly.&nbsp; Eadric, the defender of Herefordshire, had
+made his peace with the King, and he now held a place of high honour
+in his army.&nbsp; But if William met with any armed resistance on his
+Scottish expedition, it did not amount to a pitched battle.&nbsp; He
+passed through Lothian into Scotland; he crossed Forth and drew near
+to Tay, and there, by the round tower of Abernethy, the King of Scots
+swore oaths and gave hostages and became the man of the King of the
+English.&nbsp; William might now call himself, like his West-Saxon predecessors,
+<i>Bretwalda</i> and <i>Basileus</i> of the isle of Britain.&nbsp; This
+was the highest point of his fortune.&nbsp; Duke of the Normans, King
+of the English, he was undisputed lord from the march of Anjou to the
+narrow sea between Caithness and Orkney.</p>
+<p>The exact terms of the treaty between William&rsquo;s royal vassal
+and his overlord are unknown.&nbsp; But one of them was clearly the
+removal of Edgar from Scotland.&nbsp; Before long he was on the continent.&nbsp;
+William had not yet learned that Edgar was less dangerous in Britain
+than in any other part of the world, and that he was safest of all in
+William&rsquo;s own court.&nbsp; Homage done and hostages received,
+the Lord of all Britain returned to his immediate kingdom.&nbsp; His
+march is connected with many legendary stories.&nbsp; In real history
+it is marked by the foundation of the castle of Durham, and by the Conqueror&rsquo;s
+confirmation of the privileges of the palatine bishops.&nbsp; If all
+the earls of England had been like the earls of Chester, and all the
+bishops like the bishops of Durham, England would assuredly have split
+up, like Germany, into a loose federation of temporal and spiritual
+princes.&nbsp; This it was William&rsquo;s special work to hinder; but
+he doubtless saw that the exceptional privileges of one or two favoured
+lordships, standing in marked contrast to the rest, would not really
+interfere with his great plan of union.&nbsp; And William would hardly
+have confirmed the sees of London or Winchester in the privileges which
+he allowed to the distant see of Durham.&nbsp; He now also made a grant
+of earldoms, the object of which is less clear than that of most of
+his actions.&nbsp; It is not easy to say why Gospatric was deprived
+of his earldom.&nbsp; His former acts of hostility to William had been
+covered by his pardon and reappointment in 1069; and since then he had
+acted as a loyal, if perhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land.&nbsp;
+Two greater earldoms than his had become vacant by the revolt, the death,
+the imprisonment, of Edwin and Morkere.&nbsp; But these William had
+no intention of filling.&nbsp; He would not have in his realm anything
+so dangerous as an earl of the Mercian&rsquo;s or the Northumbrians
+in the old sense, whether English or Norman.&nbsp; But the defence of
+the northern frontier needed an earl to rule Northumberland in the later
+sense, the land north of the Tyne.&nbsp; And after the fate of Robert
+of Comines, William could not as yet put a Norman earl in so perilous
+a post.&nbsp; But the Englishman whom he chose was open to the same
+charges as the deposed Gospatric.&nbsp; For he was Waltheof the son
+of Siward, the hero of the storm of York in 1069.&nbsp; Already Earl
+of Northampton and Huntingdon, he was at this time high in the King&rsquo;s
+personal favour, perhaps already the husband of the King&rsquo;s niece.&nbsp;
+One side of William&rsquo;s policy comes out here.&nbsp; Union was sometimes
+helped by division.&nbsp; There were men whom William loved to make
+great, but whom he had no mind to make dangerous.&nbsp; He gave them
+vast estates, but estates for the most part scattered over different
+parts of the kingdom.&nbsp; It was only in the border earldoms and in
+Cornwall that he allowed anything at all near to the lordship of a whole
+shire to be put in the hands of a single man.&nbsp; One Norman and one
+Englishman held two earldoms together; but they were earldoms far apart.&nbsp;
+Roger of Montgomery held the earldoms of Shrewsbury and Sussex, and
+Waltheof to his midland earldom of Northampton and Huntingdon now added
+the rule of distant Northumberland.&nbsp; The men who had fought most
+stoutly against William were the men whom he most willingly received
+to favour.&nbsp; Eadric and Hereward were honoured; Waltheof was honoured
+more highly.&nbsp; He ranked along with the greatest Normans; his position
+was perhaps higher than any but the King&rsquo;s born kinsmen.&nbsp;
+But the whole tale of Waltheof is a problem that touches the character
+of the king under whom he rose and fell.&nbsp; Lifted up higher than
+any other man among the conquered, he was the one man whom William put
+to death on a political charge.&nbsp; It is hard to see the reasons
+for either his rise or his fall.&nbsp; It was doubtless mainly his end
+which won him the abiding reverence of his countrymen.&nbsp; His valour
+and his piety are loudly praised.&nbsp; But his valour we know only
+from his one personal exploit at York; his piety was consistent with
+a base murder.&nbsp; In other matters, he seems amiable, irresolute,
+and of a scrupulous conscience, and Northumbrian morality perhaps saw
+no great crime in a murder committed under the traditions of a Northumbrian
+deadly feud.&nbsp; Long before Waltheof was born, his grandfather Earl
+Ealdred had been killed by a certain Carl.&nbsp; The sons of Carl had
+fought by his side at York; but, notwithstanding this comradeship, the
+first act of Waltheof&rsquo;s rule in Northumberland was to send men
+to slay them beyond the bounds of his earldom.&nbsp; A crime that was
+perhaps admired in Northumberland and unheard of elsewhere did not lose
+him either the favour of the King or the friendship of his neighbour
+Bishop Walcher, a reforming prelate with whom Waltheof acted in concert.&nbsp;
+And when he was chosen as the single exception to William&rsquo;s merciful
+rule, it was not for this undoubted crime, but on charges of which,
+even if guilty, he might well have been forgiven.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The sojourn of William on the continent in 1072 carries us out of
+England and Normandy into the general affairs of Europe.&nbsp; Signs
+may have already showed themselves of what was coming to the south of
+Normandy; but the interest of the moment lay in the country of Matilda.&nbsp;
+Flanders, long the firm ally of Normandy, was now to change into a bitter
+enemy.&nbsp; Count Baldwin died in 1067; his successor of the same name
+died three years later, and a war followed between his widow Richildis,
+the guardian of his young son Arnulf, and his brother Robert the Frisian.&nbsp;
+Robert had won fame in the East; he had received the sovereignty of
+Friesland&mdash;a name which takes in Holland and Zealand&mdash;and
+he was now invited to deliver Flanders from the oppressions of Richildis.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, Matilda was acting as regent of Normandy, with Earl William
+of Hereford as her counsellor.&nbsp; Richildis sought help of her son&rsquo;s
+two overlords, King Henry of Germany and King Philip of France.&nbsp;
+Philip came in person; the German succours were too late.&nbsp; From
+Normandy came Earl William with a small party of knights.&nbsp; The
+kings had been asked for armies; to the Earl she offered herself, and
+he came to fight for his bride.&nbsp; But early in 1071 Philip, Arnulf,
+and William, were all overthrown by Robert the Frisian in the battle
+of Cassel.&nbsp; Arnulf and Earl William were killed; Philip made peace
+with Robert, henceforth undisputed Count of Flanders.</p>
+<p>All this brought King William to the continent, while the invasion
+of Malcolm was still unavenged.&nbsp; No open war followed between Normandy
+and Flanders; but for the rest of their lives Robert and William were
+enemies, and each helped the enemies of the other.&nbsp; William gave
+his support to Baldwin brother of the slain Arnulf, who strove to win
+Flanders from Robert.&nbsp; But the real interest of this episode lies
+in the impression which was made in the lands east of Flanders.&nbsp;
+In the troubled state of Germany, when Henry the Fourth was striving
+with the Saxons, both sides seem to have looked to the Conqueror of
+England with hope and with fear.&nbsp; On this matter our English and
+Norman authorities are silent, and the notices in the contemporary German
+writers are strangely unlike one another.&nbsp; But they show at least
+that the prince who ruled on both sides of the sea was largely in men&rsquo;s
+thoughts.&nbsp; The Saxon enemy of Henry describes him in his despair
+as seeking help in Denmark, France, Aquitaine, and also of the King
+of the English, promising him the like help, if he should ever need
+it.&nbsp; William and Henry had both to guard against Saxon enmity,
+but the throne at Winchester stood firmer than the throne at Goslar.&nbsp;
+But the historian of the continental Saxons puts into William&rsquo;s
+mouth an answer utterly unsuited to his position.&nbsp; He is made,
+when in Normandy, to answer that, having won his kingdom by force, he
+fears to leave it, lest he might not find his way back again.&nbsp;
+Far more striking is the story told three years later by Lambert of
+Herzfeld.&nbsp; Henry, when engaged in an Hungarian war, heard that
+the famous Archbishop Hanno of K&ouml;ln had leagued with William <i>Bostar</i>&mdash;so
+is his earliest surname written&mdash;King of the English, and that
+a vast army was coming to set the island monarch on the German throne.&nbsp;
+The host never came; but Henry hastened back to guard his frontier against
+<i>barbarians</i>.&nbsp; By that phrase a Teutonic writer can hardly
+mean the insular part of William&rsquo;s subjects.</p>
+<p>Now assuredly William never cherished, as his successor probably
+did, so wild a dream as that of a kingly crowning at Aachen, to be followed
+perhaps by an imperial crowning at Rome.&nbsp; But that such schemes
+were looked on as a practical danger against which the actual German
+King had to guard, at least shows the place which the Conqueror of England
+held in European imagination.</p>
+<p>For the three or four years immediately following the surrender of
+Ely, William&rsquo;s journeys to and fro between his kingdom and his
+duchy were specially frequent.&nbsp; Matilda seems to have always stayed
+in Normandy; she is never mentioned in England after the year of her
+coronation and the birth of her youngest son, and she commonly acted
+as regent of the duchy.&nbsp; In the course of 1072 we see William in
+England, in Normandy, again in England, and in Scotland.&nbsp; In 1073
+he was called beyond sea by a formidable movement.&nbsp; His great continental
+conquest had risen against him; Le Mans and all Maine were again independent.&nbsp;
+City and land chose for them a prince who came by female descent from
+the stock of their ancient counts.&nbsp; This was Hugh the son of Azo
+Marquess of Liguria and of Gersendis the sister of the last Count Herbert.&nbsp;
+The Normans were driven out of Le Mans; Azo came to take possession
+in the name of his son, but he and the citizens did not long agree.&nbsp;
+He went back, leaving his wife and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey
+of Mayenne.&nbsp; Presently the men of Le Mans threw off princely rule
+altogether and proclaimed the earliest <i>commune</i> in Northern Gaul.&nbsp;
+Here then, as at Exeter, William had to strive against an armed commonwealth,
+and, as at Exeter, we specially wish to know what were to be the relations
+between the capital and the county at large.&nbsp; The mass of the people
+throughout Maine threw themselves zealously into the cause of the commonwealth.&nbsp;
+But their zeal might not have lasted long, if, according to the usual
+run of things in such cases, they had simply exchanged the lordship
+of their hereditary masters for the corporate lordship of the citizens
+of Le Mans.&nbsp; To the nobles the change was naturally distasteful.&nbsp;
+They had to swear to the <i>commune</i>, but many of them, Geoffrey
+for one, had no thought of keeping their oaths.&nbsp; Dissensions arose;
+Hugh went back to Italy; Geoffrey occupied the castle of Le Mans, and
+the citizens dislodged him only by the dangerous help of the other prince
+who claimed the overlordship of Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou.</p>
+<p>If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjou hardly
+promised better than the lord of Normandy.&nbsp; But men in despair
+grasp at anything.&nbsp; The strange thing is that Fulk disappears now
+from the story; William steps in instead.&nbsp; And it was at least
+as much in his English as in his Norman character that the Duke and
+King won back the revolted land.&nbsp; A place in his army was held
+by English warriors, seemingly under the command of Hereward himself.&nbsp;
+Men who had fought for freedom in their own land now fought at the bidding
+of their Conqueror to put down freedom in another land.&nbsp; They went
+willingly; the English Chronicler describes the campaign with glee,
+and breaks into verse&mdash;or incorporates a contemporary ballad&mdash;at
+the tale of English victory.&nbsp; Few men of that day would see that
+the cause of Maine was in truth the cause of England.&nbsp; If York
+and Exeter could not act in concert with one another, still less could
+either act in concert with Le Mans.&nbsp; Englishmen serving in Maine
+would fancy that they were avenging their own wrongs by laying waste
+the lands of any man who spoke the French tongue.&nbsp; On William&rsquo;s
+part, the employment of Englishmen, the employment of Hereward, was
+another stroke of policy.&nbsp; It was more fully following out the
+system which led Englishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his
+comrades into Scotland.&nbsp; For in every English soldier whom William
+carried into Maine he won a loyal English subject.&nbsp; To men who
+had fought under his banners beyond the sea he would be no longer the
+Conqueror but the victorious captain; they would need some very special
+oppression at home to make them revolt against the chief whose laurels
+they had helped to win.&nbsp; As our own gleeman tells the tale, they
+did little beyond harrying the helpless land; but in continental writers
+we can trace a regular campaign, in which we hear of no battles, but
+of many sieges.&nbsp; William, as before, subdued the land piecemeal,
+keeping the city for the last.&nbsp; When he drew near to Le Mans, its
+defenders surrendered at his summons, to escape fire and slaughter by
+speedy submission.&nbsp; The new <i>commune</i> was abolished, but the
+Conqueror swore to observe all the ancient rights of the city.</p>
+<p>All this time we have heard nothing of Count Fulk.&nbsp; Presently
+we find him warring against nobles of Maine who had taken William&rsquo;s
+part, and leaguing with the Bretons against William himself.&nbsp; The
+King set forth with his whole force, Norman and English; but peace was
+made by the mediation of an unnamed Roman cardinal, abetted, we are
+told, by the chief Norman nobles.&nbsp; Success against confederated
+Anjou and Britanny might be doubtful, with Maine and England wavering
+in their allegiance, and France, Scotland, and Flanders, possible enemies
+in the distance.&nbsp; The rights of the Count of Anjou over Maine were
+formally acknowledged, and William&rsquo;s eldest son Robert did homage
+to Fulk for the county.&nbsp; Each prince stipulated for the safety
+and favour of all subjects of the other who had taken his side.&nbsp;
+Between Normandy and Anjou there was peace during the rest of the days
+of William; in Maine we shall see yet another revolt, though only a
+partial one.</p>
+<p>William went back to England in 1073.&nbsp; In 1074 he went to the
+continent for a longer absence.&nbsp; As the time just after the first
+completion of the Conquest is spoken of as a time when Normans and English
+were beginning to sit down side by side in peace, so the years which
+followed the submission of Ely are spoken of as a time of special oppression.&nbsp;
+This fact is not unconnected with the King&rsquo;s frequent absences
+from England.&nbsp; Whatever we say of William&rsquo;s own position,
+he was a check on smaller oppressors.&nbsp; Things were always worse
+when the eye of the great master was no longer watching.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s
+one weakness was that of putting overmuch trust in his immediate kinsfolk
+and friends.&nbsp; Of the two special oppressors, William Fitz-Osbern
+had thrown away his life in Flanders; but Bishop Ode was still at work,
+till several years later his king and brother struck him down with a
+truly righteous blow.</p>
+<p>The year 1074, not a year of fighting, was pro-eminently a year of
+intrigue.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s enemies on the continent strove to turn
+the representative of the West-Saxon kings to help their ends.&nbsp;
+Edgar flits to and fro between Scotland and Flanders, and the King of
+the French tempts him with the offer of a convenient settlement on the
+march of France, Normandy, and Flanders.&nbsp; Edgar sets forth from
+Scotland, but is driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret then change
+their minds, and bid him make his peace with King William.&nbsp; William
+gladly accepts his submission; an embassy is sent to bring him with
+all worship to the King in Normandy.&nbsp; He abides for several years
+in William&rsquo;s court contented and despised, receiving a daily pension
+and the profits of estates in England of no great extent which the King
+of a moment held by the grant of a rival who could afford to be magnanimous.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Edgar&rsquo;s after-life showed that he belonged to that class of
+men who, as a rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act with
+energy, and who act most creditably on behalf of others.&nbsp; But William
+had no need to fear him, and he was easily turned into a friend and
+a dependant.&nbsp; Edgar, first of Englishmen by descent, was hardly
+an Englishman by birth.&nbsp; William had now to deal with the Englishman
+who stood next to Edgar in dignity and far above him in personal estimation.&nbsp;
+We have reached the great turning-point in William&rsquo;s reign and
+character, the black and mysterious tale of the fate of Waltheof.&nbsp;
+The Earl of Northumberland, Northampton, and Huntingdon, was not the
+only earl in England of English birth.&nbsp; The earldom of the East-Angles
+was held by a born Englishman who was more hateful than any stranger.&nbsp;
+Ralph of Wader was the one Englishman who had fought at William&rsquo;s
+side against England.&nbsp; He often passes for a native of Britanny,
+and he certainly held lands and castles in that country; but he was
+Breton only by the mother&rsquo;s side.&nbsp; For Domesday and the Chronicles
+show that he was the son of an elder Earl Ralph, who had been <i>staller</i>
+or master of the horse in Edward&rsquo;s days, and who is expressly
+said to have been born in Norfolk.&nbsp; The unusual name suggests that
+the elder Ralph was not of English descent.&nbsp; He survived the coming
+of William, and his son fought on Senlac among the countrymen of his
+mother.&nbsp; This treason implies an unrecorded banishment in the days
+of Edward or Harold.&nbsp; Already earl in 1069, he had in that year
+acted vigorously for William against the Danes.&nbsp; But he now conspired
+against him along with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern,
+who had succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman
+estates had passed to his elder brother William.&nbsp; What grounds
+of complaint either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not;
+but that the loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtful throughout
+the year 1074 appears from several letters of rebuke and counsel sent
+to him by the Regent Lanfranc.&nbsp; At last the wielder of both swords
+took to his spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earl excommunicate, till
+he should submit to the King&rsquo;s mercy and make restitution to the
+King and to all men whom he had wronged.&nbsp; Roger remained stiff-necked
+under the Primate&rsquo;s censure, and presently committed an act of
+direct disobedience.&nbsp; The next year, 1075, he gave his sister Emma
+in marriage to Earl Ralph.&nbsp; This marriage the King had forbidden,
+on some unrecorded ground of state policy.&nbsp; Most likely he already
+suspected both earls, and thought any tie between them dangerous.&nbsp;
+The notice shows William stepping in to do, as an act of policy, what
+under his successors became a matter of course, done with the sole object
+of making money.&nbsp; The <i>bride-ale</i>&mdash;the name that lurks
+in the modern shape of <i>bridal</i>&mdash;was held at Exning in Cambridgeshire;
+bishops and abbots were guests of the excommunicated Roger; Waltheof
+was there, and many Breton comrades of Ralph.&nbsp; In their cups they
+began to plot how they might drive the King out of the kingdom.&nbsp;
+Charges, both true and false, were brought against William; in a mixed
+gathering of Normans, English, and Bretons, almost every act of William&rsquo;s
+life might pass as a wrong done to some part of the company, even though
+some others of the company were his accomplices.&nbsp; Above all, the
+two earls Ralph and Roger made a distinct proposal to their fellow-earl
+Waltheof.&nbsp; King William should be driven out of the land; one of
+the three should be King; the other two should remain earls, ruling
+each over a third of the kingdom.&nbsp; Such a scheme might attract
+earls, but no one else; it would undo William&rsquo;s best and greatest
+work; it would throw back the growing unity of the kingdom by all the
+steps that it had taken during several generations.</p>
+<p>Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes?&nbsp;
+Weighing the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the
+bride-ale, he consented to the treason, but that he thought better of
+it the next morning.&nbsp; He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and ghostly
+father, and confessed to him whatever he had to confess.&nbsp; The Primate
+assigned his penitent some ecclesiastical penances; the Regent bade
+the Earl go into Normandy and tell the whole tale to the King.&nbsp;
+Waltheof went, with gifts in hand; he told his story and craved forgiveness.&nbsp;
+William made light of the matter, and kept Waltheof with him, but seemingly
+not under restraint, till he came back to England.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile the other two earls were in open rebellion.&nbsp; Ralph,
+half Breton by birth and earl of a Danish land, asked help in Britanny
+and Denmark.&nbsp; Bretons from Britanny and Bretons settled in England
+flocked to him.&nbsp; King Swegen, now almost at the end of his reign
+and life, listened to the call of the rebels, and sent a fleet under
+the command of his son Cnut, the future saint, together with an earl
+named Hakon.&nbsp; The revolt in England was soon put down, both in
+East and West.&nbsp; The rebel earls met with no support save from those
+who were under their immediate influence.&nbsp; The country acted zealously
+for the King.&nbsp; Lanfranc could report that Earl Ralph and his army
+were fleeing, and that the King&rsquo;s men, French and English, were
+chasing them.&nbsp; In another letter he could add, with some strength
+of language, that the kingdom was cleansed from the filth of the Bretons.&nbsp;
+At Norwich only the castle was valiantly defended by the newly married
+Countess Emma.&nbsp; Roger was taken prisoner; Ralph fled to Britanny;
+their followers were punished with various mutilations, save the defenders
+of Norwich, who were admitted to terms.&nbsp; The Countess joined her
+husband in Britanny, and in days to come Ralph did something to redeem
+so many treasons by dying as an armed pilgrim in the first crusade.</p>
+<p>The main point of this story is that the revolt met with no English
+support whatever.&nbsp; Not only did Bishop Wulfstan march along with
+his fierce Norman brethren Ode and Geoffrey; the English people everywhere
+were against the rebels.&nbsp; For this revolt offered no attraction
+to English feeling; had the undertaking been less hopeless, nothing
+could have been gained by exchanging the rule of William for that of
+Ralph or Roger.&nbsp; It might have been different if the Danes had
+played their part better.&nbsp; The rebellion broke out while William
+was in Normandy; it was the sailing of the Danish fleet which brought
+him back to England.&nbsp; But never did enterprise bring less honour
+on its leaders than this last Danish voyage up the Humber.&nbsp; All
+that the holy Cnut did was to plunder the minster of Saint Peter at
+York and to sail away.</p>
+<p>His coming however seems to have altogether changed the King&rsquo;s
+feelings with regard to Waltheof.&nbsp; As yet he had not been dealt
+with as a prisoner or an enemy.&nbsp; He now came back to England with
+the King, and William&rsquo;s first act was to imprison both Waltheof
+and Roger.&nbsp; The imprisonment of Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was
+a matter of course.&nbsp; As for Waltheof, whatever he had promised
+at the bride-ale, he had done no disloyal act; he had had no share in
+the rebellion, and he had told the King all that he knew.&nbsp; But
+he had listened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to leave him
+at large when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, was actually
+afloat.&nbsp; Still what followed is strange indeed, specially strange
+with William as its chief doer.</p>
+<p>At the Midwinter Gem&oacute;t of 1075-1076 Roger and Waltheof were
+brought to trial.&nbsp; Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace
+of Boulogne.&nbsp; Roger was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment
+for life.&nbsp; Waltheof made his defence; his sentence was deferred;
+he was kept at Winchester in a straiter imprisonment than before.&nbsp;
+At the Pentecostal Gem&oacute;t of 1076, held at Westminster, his case
+was again argued, and he was sentenced to death.&nbsp; On the last day
+of May the last English earl was beheaded on the hills above Winchester.</p>
+<p>Such a sentence and execution, strange at any time, is specially
+strange under William.&nbsp; Whatever Waltheof had done, his offence
+was lighter than that of Roger; yet Waltheof has the heavier and Roger
+the lighter punishment.&nbsp; With Scroggs or Jeffreys on the bench,
+it might have been argued that Waltheof&rsquo;s confession to the King
+did not, in strictness of law, wipe out the guilt of his original promise
+to the conspirators; but William the Great did not commonly act after
+the fashion of Scroggs and Jeffreys.&nbsp; To deprive Waltheof of his
+earldom might doubtless be prudent; a man who had even listened to traitors
+might be deemed unfit for such a trust.&nbsp; It might be wise to keep
+him safe under the King&rsquo;s eye, like Edwin, Morkere, and Edgar.&nbsp;
+But why should he be picked out for death, when the far more guilty
+Roger was allowed to live?&nbsp; Why should he be chosen as the one
+victim of a prince who never before or after, in Normandy or in England,
+doomed any man to die on a political charge?&nbsp; These are questions
+hard to answer.&nbsp; It is not enough to say that Waltheof was an Englishman,
+that it was William&rsquo;s policy gradually to get rid of Englishmen
+in high places, and that the time was now come to get rid of the last.&nbsp;
+For such a policy forfeiture, or at most imprisonment, would have been
+enough.&nbsp; While other Englishmen lost lands, honours, at most liberty,
+Waltheof alone lost his life by a judicial sentence.&nbsp; It is likely
+enough that many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the one
+Englishman who still held the highest rank in England.&nbsp; Still forfeiture
+without death might have satisfied even them.&nbsp; But Waltheof was
+not only earl of three shires; he was husband of the King&rsquo;s near
+kinswoman.&nbsp; We are told that Judith was the enemy and accuser of
+her husband.&nbsp; This may have touched William&rsquo;s one weak point.&nbsp;
+Yet he would hardly have swerved from the practice of his whole life
+to please the bloody caprice of a niece who longed for the death of
+her husband.&nbsp; And if Judith longed for Waltheof&rsquo;s death,
+it was not from a wish to supply his place with another.&nbsp; Legend
+says that she refused a second husband offered her by the King; it is
+certain that she remained a widow.</p>
+<p>Waltheof&rsquo;s death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed
+of blood unlike anything else in William&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; It seems
+to have been impolitic; it led to no revolt, but it called forth a new
+burst of English feeling.&nbsp; Waltheof was deemed the martyr of his
+people; he received the same popular canonization as more than one English
+patriot.&nbsp; Signs and wonders were wrought at his tomb at Crowland,
+till displays of miraculous power which were so inconsistent with loyalty
+and good order were straitly forbidden.&nbsp; The act itself marks a
+stage in the downward course of William&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; In
+itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the very invasion of England,
+with all the bloodshed that they caused, might be deemed blacker crimes
+than the unjust death of a single man.&nbsp; But as human nature stands,
+the less crime needs a worse man to do it.&nbsp; Crime, as ever, led
+to further crime and was itself the punishment of crime.&nbsp; In the
+eyes of William&rsquo;s contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest
+act of William&rsquo;s life, was also its turning-point.&nbsp; From
+the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles&rsquo; hill the magic of William&rsquo;s
+name and William&rsquo;s arms passed away.&nbsp; Unfailing luck no longer
+waited on him; after Waltheof&rsquo;s death he never, till his last
+campaign of all, won a battle or took a town.&nbsp; In this change of
+William&rsquo;s fortunes the men of his own day saw the judgement of
+God upon his crime.&nbsp; And in the fact at least they were undoubtedly
+right.&nbsp; Henceforth, though William&rsquo;s real power abides unshaken,
+the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty defeats.&nbsp; The
+last eleven years of his life would never have won him the name of Conqueror.&nbsp;
+But in the higher walk of policy and legislation never was his nobler
+surname more truly deserved.&nbsp; Never did William the Great show
+himself so truly great as in these later years.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggest another
+act of William&rsquo;s which cannot have been far from it in point of
+time, and about which men spoke in his own day in the same spirit.&nbsp;
+If the judgement of God came on William for the beheading of Waltheof,
+it came on him also for the making of the New Forest.&nbsp; As to that
+forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal
+of modern misconception.&nbsp; The word <i>forest</i> is often misunderstood.&nbsp;
+In its older meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts,
+a forest has nothing to do with trees.&nbsp; It is a tract of land put
+outside the common law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and
+that commonly, probably always, to secure for the King the freer enjoyment
+of the pleasure of hunting.&nbsp; Such a forest William made in Hampshire;
+the impression which it made on men&rsquo;s minds at the time is shown
+by its having kept the name of the New Forest for eight hundred years.&nbsp;
+There is no reason to think that William laid waste any large tract
+of specially fruitful country, least of all that he laid waste a land
+thickly inhabited; for most of the Forest land never can have been such.&nbsp;
+But it is certain from Domesday and the Chronicle that William did <i>afforest</i>
+a considerable tract of land in Hampshire; he set it apart for the purposes
+of hunting; he fenced it in by special and cruel laws&mdash;stopping
+indeed short of death&mdash;for the protection of his pleasures, and
+in this process some men lost their lands, and were driven from their
+homes.&nbsp; Some destruction of houses is here implied; some destruction
+of churches is not unlikely.&nbsp; The popular belief, which hardly
+differs from the account of writers one degree later than Domesday and
+the Chronicle, simply exaggerates the extent of destruction.&nbsp; There
+was no such wide-spread laying waste as is often supposed, because no
+such wide-spread laying waste was needed.&nbsp; But whatever was needed
+for William&rsquo;s purpose was done; and Domesday gives us the record.&nbsp;
+And the act surely makes, like the death of Waltheof, a downward stage
+in William&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; The harrying of Northumberland was
+in itself a far greater crime, and involved far more of human wretchedness.&nbsp;
+But it is not remembered in the same way, because it has left no such
+abiding memorial.&nbsp; But here again the lesser crime needed a worse
+man to do it.&nbsp; The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done
+with a political object; it was the extreme form of military severity;
+it was not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to secure
+the fuller enjoyment of a brutal sport.&nbsp; To this level William
+had now sunk.&nbsp; It was in truth now that hunting in England finally
+took the character of a mere sport.&nbsp; Hunting was no new thing;
+in an early state of society it is often a necessary thing.&nbsp; The
+hunting of Alfred is spoken of as a grave matter of business, as part
+of his kingly duty.&nbsp; He had to make war on the wild beasts, as
+he had to make war on the Danes.&nbsp; The hunting of William is simply
+a sport, not his duty or his business, but merely his pleasure.&nbsp;
+And to this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and slaughter,
+he did not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and to guard
+his enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age men shuddered.</p>
+<p>For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange
+and frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on the
+scene of his crime.&nbsp; One of these himself he saw, the death of
+his second son Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged life
+might have saved England from the rule of William Rufus.&nbsp; He died
+in the Forest, about the year 1081, to the deep grief of his parents.&nbsp;
+And Domesday contains a touching entry, how William gave back his land
+to a despoiled Englishman as an offering for Richard&rsquo;s soul.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their honours
+and estates into the King&rsquo;s hands.&nbsp; Another fresh source
+of wealth came by the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal
+rank and her great estates, and who died while the proceedings against
+Waltheof were going on.&nbsp; It was not now so important for William
+as it had been in the first years of the Conquest to reward his followers;
+he could now think of the royal hoard in the first place.&nbsp; Of the
+estates which now fell in to the Crown large parts were granted out.&nbsp;
+The house of Bigod, afterwards so renowned as Earls of Norfolk, owe
+their rise to their forefather&rsquo;s share in the forfeited lands
+of Earl Ralph.&nbsp; But William kept the greater part to himself; one
+lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the Lady, he gave to the
+church of Saint Peter at Rome.&nbsp; Of the three earldoms, those of
+Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the later earldoms of those
+lands have no connexion with the earls of William&rsquo;s day.&nbsp;
+Waltheof&rsquo;s southern earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon became
+the dowry of his daughter Matilda; that of Huntingdon passed to his
+descendants the Kings of Scots.&nbsp; But Northumberland, close on the
+Scottish border, still needed an earl; but there is something strange
+in the choice of Bishop Walcher of Durham.&nbsp; It is possible that
+this appointment was a concession to English feeling stirred to wrath
+at the death of Waltheof.&nbsp; The days of English earls were over,
+and a Norman would have been looked on as Waltheof&rsquo;s murderer.&nbsp;
+The Lotharingian bishop was a stranger; but he was not a Norman, and
+he was no oppressor of Englishmen.&nbsp; But he was strangely unfit
+for the place.&nbsp; Not a fighting bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he
+was chiefly devoted to spiritual affairs, specially to the revival of
+the monastic life, which had died out in Northern England since the
+Danish invasions.&nbsp; But his weak trust in unworthy favourites, English
+and foreign, led him to a fearful and memorable end.&nbsp; The Bishop
+was on terms of close friendship with Ligulf, an Englishman of the highest
+birth and uncle by marriage to Earl Waltheof.&nbsp; He had kept his
+estates; but the insolence of his Norman neighbours had caused him to
+come and live in the city of Durham near his friend the Bishop.&nbsp;
+His favour with Walcher roused the envy of some of the Bishop&rsquo;s
+favourites, who presently contrived his death.&nbsp; The Bishop lamented,
+and rebuked them; but he failed to &ldquo;do justice,&rdquo; to punish
+the offenders sternly and speedily.&nbsp; He was therefore believed
+to be himself guilty of Ligulf&rsquo;s death.&nbsp; One of the most
+striking and instructive events of the time followed.&nbsp; On May 14,
+1080, a full Gem&oacute;t of the earldom was held at Gateshead to deal
+with the murder of Ligulf.&nbsp; This was one of those rare occasions
+when a strong feeling led every man to the assembly.&nbsp; The local
+Parliament took its ancient shape of an armed crowd, headed by the noblest
+Englishmen left in the earldom.&nbsp; There was no vote, no debate;
+the shout was &ldquo;Short rede good rede, slay ye the Bishop.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And to that cry, Walcher himself and his companions, the murderers of
+Ligulf among them, were slaughtered by the raging multitude who had
+gathered to avenge him.</p>
+<p>The riot in which Walcher died was no real revolt against William&rsquo;s
+government.&nbsp; Such a local rising against a local wrong might have
+happened in the like case under Edward or Harold.&nbsp; No government
+could leave such a deed unpunished; but William&rsquo;s own ideas of
+justice would have been fully satisfied by the blinding or mutilation
+of a few ringleaders.&nbsp; But William was in Normandy in the midst
+of domestic and political cares.&nbsp; He sent his brother Ode to restore
+order, and his vengeance was frightful.&nbsp; The land was harried;
+innocent men were mutilated and put to death; others saved their lives
+by bribes.&nbsp; Earl after earl was set over a land so hard to rule.&nbsp;
+A certain Alberie was appointed, but he was removed as unfit.&nbsp;
+The fierce Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances tried his hand and resigned.&nbsp;
+At the time of William&rsquo;s death the earldom was held by Geoffrey&rsquo;s
+nephew Robert of Mowbray, a stern and gloomy stranger, but whom Englishmen
+reckoned among &ldquo;good men,&rdquo; when he guarded the marches of
+England against the Scot.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed in Normandy
+for several years.&nbsp; His ill luck now began.&nbsp; Before the year
+1076 was out, he entered, we know not why, on a Breton campaign.&nbsp;
+But he was driven from Dol by the combined forces of Britanny and France;
+Philip was ready to help any enemy of William.&nbsp; The Conqueror had
+now for the first time suffered defeat in his own person.&nbsp; He made
+peace with both enemies, promising his daughter Constance to Alan of
+Britanny.&nbsp; But the marriage did not follow till ten years later.&nbsp;
+The peace with France, as the English Chronicle says, &ldquo;held little
+while;&rdquo; Philip could not resist the temptation of helping William&rsquo;s
+eldest son Robert when the reckless young man rebelled against his father.&nbsp;
+With most of the qualities of an accomplished knight, Robert had few
+of those which make either a wise ruler or an honest man.&nbsp; A brave
+soldier, even a skilful captain, he was no general; ready of speech
+and free of hand, he was lavish rather than bountiful.&nbsp; He did
+not lack generous and noble feelings; but of a steady course, even in
+evil, he was incapable.&nbsp; As a ruler, he was no oppressor in his
+own person; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity to
+say No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than the oppression
+of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others.&nbsp; William
+would not set such an one over any part of his dominions before his
+time, and it was his policy to keep his children dependent on him.&nbsp;
+While he enriched his brothers, he did not give the smallest scrap of
+the spoils of England to his sons.&nbsp; But Robert deemed that he had
+a right to something greater than private estates.&nbsp; The nobles
+of Normandy had done homage to him as William&rsquo;s successor; he
+had done homage to Fulk for Maine, as if he were himself its count.&nbsp;
+He was now stirred up by evil companions to demand that, if his father
+would not give him part of his kingdom&mdash;the spirit of Edwin and
+Morkere had crossed the sea&mdash;he would at least give him Normandy
+and Maine.&nbsp; William refused with many pithy sayings.&nbsp; It was
+not his manner to take off his clothes till he went to bed.&nbsp; Robert
+now, with a band of discontented young nobles, plunged into border warfare
+against his father.&nbsp; He then wandered over a large part of Europe,
+begging and receiving money and squandering all that he got.&nbsp; His
+mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William
+and Matilda after so many years of faithful union.&nbsp; William rebuked
+his wife for helping his enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded
+the mother&rsquo;s love for her first-born.&nbsp; The mother was forgiven,
+but her messenger, sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery.</p>
+<p>At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in the
+border-fortress of Gerberoi.&nbsp; The strife between father and son
+became dangerous.&nbsp; William besieged the castle, to undergo before
+its walls his second defeat, to receive his first wound, and that at
+the hands of his own son.&nbsp; Pierced in the hand by the lance of
+Robert, his horse smitten by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to the ground,
+and was saved only by an Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggod of Wallingford,
+who gave his life for his king.&nbsp; It seems an early softening of
+the tale which says that Robert dismounted and craved his father&rsquo;s
+pardon; it seems a later hardening which says that William pronounced
+a curse on his son.&nbsp; William Rufus too, known as yet only as the
+dutiful son of his father, was wounded in his defence.&nbsp; The blow
+was not only grievous to William&rsquo;s feelings as a father; it was
+a serious military defeat.&nbsp; The two wounded Williams and the rest
+of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siege of Gerberoi was
+raised.</p>
+<p>We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peace
+between father and son.&nbsp; In the course of the year 1080 a peace
+was patched up, and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert&rsquo;s
+energies in an expedition into Scotland.&nbsp; In the autumn of the
+year of Gerberoi Malcolm had made another wasting inroad into Northumberland.&nbsp;
+With the King absent and Northumberland in confusion through the death
+of Walcher, this wrong went unavenged till the autumn of 1080.&nbsp;
+Robert gained no special glory in Scotland; a second quarrel with his
+father followed, and Robert remained a banished man during the last
+seven years of William&rsquo;s reign.</p>
+<p>In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the
+Truce of God again renewed which we heard of years ago.&nbsp; The forms
+of outrage on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which the
+strong hand of William had put down more thoroughly than the Truce would
+do, had clearly begun again during the confusions caused by the rebellion
+of Robert.</p>
+<p>The two next years, 1081-1082, William was in England.&nbsp; His
+home sorrows were now pressing heavily on him.&nbsp; His eldest son
+was a rebel and an exile; about this time his second son died in the
+New Forest; according to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of
+Edwin, who had never forgotten her English lover, was now promised to
+the Spanish King Alfonso, and died&mdash;in answer to her own prayers&mdash;before
+the marriage was celebrated.&nbsp; And now the partner of William&rsquo;s
+life was taken from him four years after his one difference with her.&nbsp;
+On November 3, 1083, Matilda died after a long sickness, to her husband&rsquo;s
+lasting grief.&nbsp; She was buried in her own church at Caen, and churches
+in England received gifts from William on behalf of her soul.</p>
+<p>The mourner had soon again to play the warrior.&nbsp; Nearly the
+whole of William&rsquo;s few remaining years were spent in a struggle
+which in earlier times he would surely have ended in a day.&nbsp; Maine,
+city and county, did not call for a third conquest; but a single baron
+of Maine defied William&rsquo;s power, and a single castle of Maine
+held out against him for three years.&nbsp; Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont
+and Fresnay, revolted on some slight quarrel.&nbsp; The siege of his
+castle of Sainte-Susanne went on from the death of Matilda till the
+last year but one of William&rsquo;s reign.&nbsp; The tale is full of
+picturesque detail; but William had little personal share in it.&nbsp;
+The best captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain against this
+one donjon on its rock.&nbsp; William at last made peace with the subject
+who was too strong for him.&nbsp; Hubert came to England and received
+the King&rsquo;s pardon.&nbsp; Practically the pardon was the other
+way.</p>
+<p>Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the
+Conqueror.&nbsp; Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful
+in all.&nbsp; One last success was indeed in store for him; but that
+was to be purchased with his own life.&nbsp; As he turned away in defeat
+from this castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of domestic
+sorrow, he may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse
+of Waltheof, the curse of the New Forest, was ever tracking his steps.&nbsp;
+If so, his crimes were done in England, and their vengeance came in
+Normandy.&nbsp; In England there was no further room for his mission
+as Conqueror; he had no longer foes to overcome.&nbsp; He had an act
+of justice to do, and he did it.&nbsp; He had his kingdom to guard,
+and he guarded it.&nbsp; He had to take the great step which should
+make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps without fully knowing
+what he did, to bid the picture of his reign be painted for all time
+as no reign before or after has been painted.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM&mdash;1081-1087</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Of two events of these last years of the Conqueror&rsquo;s reign,
+events of very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken.&nbsp;
+The Welsh expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on British
+ground, and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of England.&nbsp;
+William now made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but he was constantly
+called over to England.&nbsp; The Welsh campaign proves his presence
+in England in 1081; he was again in England in 1082, but he went back
+to Normandy between the two visits.&nbsp; The visit of 1082 was a memorable
+one; there is no more characteristic act of the Conqueror than the deed
+which marks it.&nbsp; The cruelty and insolence of his brother Ode,
+whom he had trusted so much more than he deserved, had passed all bounds.&nbsp;
+In avenging the death of Walcher he had done deeds such as William never
+did himself or allowed any other man to do.&nbsp; And now, beguiled
+by a soothsayer who said that one of his name should be the next Pope,
+he dreamed of succeeding to the throne of Gregory the Seventh.&nbsp;
+He made all kinds of preparations to secure his succession, and he was
+at last about to set forth for Italy at the head of something like an
+army.&nbsp; His schemes were by no means to the liking of his brother.&nbsp;
+William came suddenly over from Normandy, and met Ode in the Isle of
+Wight.&nbsp; There the King got together as many as he could of the
+great men of the realm.&nbsp; Before them he arraigned Ode for all his
+crimes.&nbsp; He had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and
+he had shown himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the
+realm.&nbsp; Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed
+for the defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him
+on his wild schemes in Italy.&nbsp; How was he to deal with such a brother,
+William asked of his wise men.</p>
+<p>He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak.&nbsp; William
+then gave his judgement.&nbsp; The common enemy of the whole realm should
+not be spared because he was the King&rsquo;s brother.&nbsp; He should
+be seized and put in ward.&nbsp; As none dared to seize him, the King
+seized him with his own hands.&nbsp; And now, for the first time in
+England, we hear words which were often heard again.&nbsp; The bishop
+stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the privileges of his order.&nbsp;
+He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge him but the Pope.&nbsp;
+William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his answer ready.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom I set
+over my kingdom.&rdquo;&nbsp; So the Earl of Kent was carried off to
+a prison in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for the
+release of the Bishop of Bayeux.</p>
+<p>The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his
+island kingdom.&nbsp; In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-bed
+of his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the Midwinter
+Gem&oacute;t in England.&nbsp; The chief object of the assembly was
+the specially distasteful one of laying on of a tax.&nbsp; In the course
+of the next year, six shillings was levied on every hide of land to
+meet a pressing need.&nbsp; The powers of the North were again threatening;
+the danger, if it was danger, was greater than when Waltheof smote the
+Normans in the gate at York.&nbsp; Swegen and his successor Harold were
+dead.&nbsp; Cnut the Saint reigned in Denmark, the son-in-law of Robert
+of Flanders.&nbsp; This alliance with William&rsquo;s enemy joined with
+his remembrance of his own two failures to stir up the Danish king to
+a yearning for some exploit in England.&nbsp; English exiles were still
+found to urge him to the enterprise.&nbsp; William&rsquo;s conquest
+had scattered banished or discontented Englishmen over all Europe.&nbsp;
+Many had made their way to the Eastern Rome; they had joined the Warangian
+guard, the surest support of the Imperial throne, and at Dyrrhachion,
+as on Senlac, the axe of England had met the lance of Normandy in battle.&nbsp;
+Others had fled to the North; they prayed Cnut to avenge the death of
+his kinsman Harold and to deliver England from the yoke of men&mdash;so
+an English writer living in Denmark spoke of them&mdash;of Roman speech.&nbsp;
+Thus the Greek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other, still
+kept on the name of Rome.&nbsp; The fleet of Denmark was joined by the
+fleet of Flanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout and
+peaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a share in
+the work of war.</p>
+<p>Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of the
+tax that he had just levied.&nbsp; He could hardly have dreamed of defending
+England against Danish invaders by English weapons only.&nbsp; But he
+thought as little of trusting the work to his own Normans.&nbsp; With
+the money of England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse and foot,
+from France and Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert was still defying
+him at Sainte-Susanne.&nbsp; He gathered this force on the mainland,
+and came back at its head, a force such as England had never before
+seen; men wondered how the land might feed them all.&nbsp; The King&rsquo;s
+men, French and English, had to feed them, each man according to the
+amount of his land.&nbsp; And now William did what Harold had refused
+to do; he laid waste the whole coast that lay open to attack from Denmark
+and Flanders.&nbsp; But no Danes, no Flemings, came.&nbsp; Disputes
+arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the great enterprise came
+to nothing.&nbsp; William kept part of his mercenaries in England, and
+part he sent to their homes.&nbsp; Cnut was murdered in a church by
+his own subjects, and was canonized as <i>Sanctus Canutus</i> by a Pope
+who could not speak the Scandinavian name.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, at the Midwinter Gem&oacute;t of 1085-1086, held in due
+form at Gloucester, William did one of his greatest acts.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+King had mickle thought and sooth deep speech with his Witan about his
+land, how it were set and with whilk men.&rdquo;&nbsp; In that &ldquo;deep
+speech,&rdquo; so called in our own tongue, lurks a name well known
+and dear to every Englishman.&nbsp; The result of that famous parliament
+is set forth at length by the Chronicler.&nbsp; The King sent his men
+into each shire, men who did indeed set down in their writ how the land
+was set and of what men.&nbsp; In that writ we have a record in the
+Roman tongue no less precious than the Chronicles in our own.&nbsp;
+For that writ became the Book of Winchester, the book to which our fathers
+gave the name of Domesday, the book of judgement that spared no man.</p>
+<p>The Great Survey was made in the course of the first seven months
+of the year 1086.&nbsp; Commissioners were sent into every shire, who
+inquired by the oaths of the men of the hundreds by whom the land had
+been held in King Edward&rsquo;s days and what it was worth then, by
+whom it was held at the time of the survey and what it was worth then;
+and lastly, whether its worth could be raised.&nbsp; Nothing was to
+be left out.&nbsp; &ldquo;So sooth narrowly did he let spear it out,
+that there was not a hide or a yard of land, nor further&mdash;it is
+shame to tell, and it thought him no shame to do&mdash;an ox nor a cow
+nor a swine was left that was not set in his writ.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+kind of searching inquiry, never liked at any time, would be specially
+grievous then.&nbsp; The taking of the survey led to disturbances in
+many places, in which not a few lives were lost.&nbsp; While the work
+was going on, William went to and fro till he knew thoroughly how this
+land was set and of what men.&nbsp; He had now a list of all men, French
+and English, who held land in his kingdom.&nbsp; And it was not enough
+to have their names in a writ; he would see them face to face.&nbsp;
+On the making of the survey followed that great assembly, that great
+work of legislation, which was the crown of William&rsquo;s life as
+a ruler and lawgiver of England.&nbsp; The usual assemblies of the year
+had been held at Winchester and Westminster.&nbsp; An extraordinary
+assembly was held in the plain of Salisbury on the first day of August.&nbsp;
+The work of that assembly has been already spoken of.&nbsp; It was now
+that all the owners of land in the kingdom became the men of the King;
+it was now that England became one, with no fear of being again parted
+asunder.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The close connexion between the Great Survey and the law and the
+oath of Salisbury is plain.&nbsp; It was a great matter for the King
+to get in the gold certainly and, we may add, fairly.&nbsp; William
+would deal with no man otherwise than according to law as he understood
+the law.&nbsp; But he sought for more than this.&nbsp; He would not
+only know what this land could be made to pay; he would know the state
+of his kingdom in every detail; he would know its military strength;
+he would know whether his own will, in the long process of taking from
+this man and giving to that, had been really carried out.&nbsp; Domesday
+is before all things a record of the great confiscation, a record of
+that gradual change by which, in less than twenty years, the greater
+part of the land of England had been transferred from native to foreign
+owners.&nbsp; And nothing shows like Domesday in what a formally legal
+fashion that transfer was carried out.&nbsp; What were the principles
+on which it was carried out, we have already seen.&nbsp; All private
+property in land came only from the grant of King William.&nbsp; It
+had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; he might keep it
+himself; he might give it back to its old owner or grant it to a new
+one.&nbsp; So it was at the general redemption of lands; so it was whenever
+fresh conquests or fresh revolts threw fresh lands into the King&rsquo;s
+hands.&nbsp; The principle is so thoroughly taken for granted, that
+we are a little startled to find it incidentally set forth in so many
+words in a case of no special importance.&nbsp; A priest named Robert
+held a single yardland in alms of the King; he became a monk in the
+monastery of Stow-in-Lindesey, and his yardland became the property
+of the house.&nbsp; One hardly sees why this case should have been picked
+out for a solemn declaration of the general law.&nbsp; Yet, as &ldquo;the
+day on which the English redeemed their lands&rdquo; is spoken of only
+casually in the case of a particular estate, so the principle that no
+man could hold lands except by the King&rsquo;s grant (&ldquo;Non licet
+terram alicui habere nisi regis concessu&rdquo;) is brought in only
+to illustrate the wrongful dealing of Robert and the monks of Stow in
+the case of a very small holding indeed.</p>
+<p>All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William&rsquo;s
+whole position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system
+of legal fictions.&nbsp; Domesday is full of them; one might almost
+say that there is nothing else there.&nbsp; A very attentive study of
+Domesday might bring out the fact that William was a foreign conqueror,
+and that the book itself was a record of the process by which he took
+the lands of the natives who had fought against him to reward the strangers
+who had fought for him.&nbsp; But nothing of this kind appears on the
+surface of the record.&nbsp; The great facts of the Conquest are put
+out of sight.&nbsp; William is taken for granted, not only as the lawful
+king, but as the immediate successor of Edward.&nbsp; The &ldquo;time
+of King Edward&rdquo; and the &ldquo;time of King William&rdquo; are
+the two times that the law knows of.&nbsp; The compilers of the record
+are put to some curious shifts to describe the time between &ldquo;the
+day when King Edward was alive and dead&rdquo; and the day &ldquo;when
+King William came into England.&rdquo;&nbsp; That coming might have
+been as peaceful as the coming of James the First or George the First.&nbsp;
+The two great battles are more than once referred to, but only casually
+in the mention of particular persons.&nbsp; A very sharp critic might
+guess that one of them had something to do with King William&rsquo;s
+coming into England; but that is all.&nbsp; Harold appears only as Earl;
+it is only in two or three places that we hear of a &ldquo;time of Harold,&rdquo;
+and even of Harold &ldquo;seizing the kingdom&rdquo; and &ldquo;reigning.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+These two or three places stand out in such contrast to the general
+language of the record that we are led to think that the scribe must
+have copied some earlier record or taken down the words of some witness,
+and must have forgotten to translate them into more loyal formulae.&nbsp;
+So in recording who held the land in King Edward&rsquo;s day and who
+in King William&rsquo;s, there is nothing to show that in so many cases
+the holder under Edward had been turned out to make room for the holder
+under William.&nbsp; The former holder is marked by the perfectly colourless
+word &ldquo;ancestor&rdquo; (&ldquo;antecessor&rdquo;), a word as yet
+meaning, not &ldquo;forefather,&rdquo; but &ldquo;predecessor&rdquo;
+of any kind.&nbsp; In Domesday the word is most commonly an euphemism
+for &ldquo;dispossessed Englishman.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is a still more
+distinct euphemism where the Norman holder is in more than one place
+called the &ldquo;heir&rdquo; of the dispossessed Englishmen.</p>
+<p>The formulae of Domesday are the most speaking witness to the spirit
+of outward legality which ruled every act of William.&nbsp; In this
+way they are wonderfully instructive; but from the formulae alone no
+one could ever make the real facts of William&rsquo;s coming and reign.&nbsp;
+It is the incidental notices which make us more at home in the local
+and personal life of this reign than of any reign before or for a long
+time after.&nbsp; The Commissioners had to report whether the King&rsquo;s
+will had been everywhere carried out, whether every man, great and small,
+French and English, had what the King meant him to have, neither more
+nor less.&nbsp; And they had often to report a state of things different
+from what the King had meant to be.&nbsp; Many men had not all that
+King William had meant them to have, and many others had much more.&nbsp;
+Normans had taken both from Englishmen and from other Normans.&nbsp;
+Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some had taken from ecclesiastical
+bodies; some had taken from King William himself; nay King William himself
+holds lands which he ought to give up to another man.&nbsp; This last
+entry at least shows that William was fully ready to do right, according
+to his notions of right.&nbsp; So also the King&rsquo;s two brothers
+are set down among the chief offenders.&nbsp; Of these unlawful holdings
+of land, marked in the technical language of the Survey as <i>invasiones</i>
+and <i>occupationes</i>, many were doubtless real cases of violent seizure,
+without excuse even according to William&rsquo;s reading of the law.&nbsp;
+But this does not always follow, even when the language of the Survey
+would seem to imply it.&nbsp; Words implying violence, <i>per vim</i>
+and the like, are used in the legal language of all ages, where no force
+has been used, merely to mark a possession as illegal.&nbsp; We are
+startled at finding the Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders;
+but the words &ldquo;sanctus Paulus invasit&rdquo; mean no more than
+that the canons of Saint Paul&rsquo;s church in London held lands to
+which the Commissioners held that they had no good title.&nbsp; It is
+these cases where one man held land which another claimed that gave
+opportunity for those personal details, stories, notices of tenures
+and customs, which make Domesday the most precious store of knowledge
+of the time.</p>
+<p>One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the way
+in which the lands in this or that district were commonly granted out.&nbsp;
+The in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the lands which such
+and such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, held in that shire
+or district.&nbsp; The grantee stepped exactly into the place of the
+<i>antecessor</i>; he inherited all his rights and all his burthens.&nbsp;
+He inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent of the lands of
+the <i>antecessor</i> or as to the nature of his tenure.&nbsp; And new
+disputes arose in the process of transfer.&nbsp; One common source of
+dispute was when the former owner, besides lands which were strictly
+his own, held lands on lease, subject to a reversionary interest on
+the part of the Crown or the Church.&nbsp; The lease or sale&mdash;<i>emere</i>
+is the usual word&mdash;of Church lands for three lives to return to
+the Church at the end of the third life was very common.&nbsp; If the
+<i>antecessor</i> was himself the third life, the grantee, his <i>heir</i>,
+had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take in only with
+all its existing liabilities.&nbsp; But the grantee often took possession
+of the whole of the land held by the <i>antecessor</i>, as if it were
+all alike his own.&nbsp; A crowd of complaints followed from all manner
+of injured persons and bodies, great and small, French and English,
+lay and clerical.&nbsp; The Commissioners seem to have fairly heard
+all, and to have fairly reported all for the King to judge of.&nbsp;
+It is their care to do right to all men which has given us such strange
+glimpses of the inner life of an age which had none like it before or
+after.</p>
+<p>The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem to mark
+William&rsquo;s work in England, his work as an English statesman, as
+done.&nbsp; He could hardly have had time to redress the many cases
+of wrong which the Survey laid before him; but he was able to wring
+yet another tax out of the nation according to his new and more certain
+register.&nbsp; He then, for the last time, crossed to Normandy with
+his new hoard.&nbsp; The Chronicler and other writers of the time dwell
+on the physical portents of these two years, the storms, the fires,
+the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths of famous men on both sides
+of the sea.&nbsp; Of the year 1087, the last year of the Conqueror,
+it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to set forth the signs
+and wonders.&nbsp; The King had left England safe, peaceful, thoroughly
+bowed down under the yoke, cursing the ruler who taxed her and granted
+away her lands, yet half blessing him for the &ldquo;good frith&rdquo;
+that he made against the murderer, the robber, and the ravisher.&nbsp;
+But the land that he had won was neither to see his end nor to shelter
+his dust.&nbsp; One last gleam of success was, after so many reverses,
+to crown his arms; but it was success which was indeed unworthy of the
+Conqueror who had entered Exeter and Le Mans in peaceful triumph.&nbsp;
+And the death-blow was now to come to him who, after so many years of
+warfare, stooped at last for the first time to cruel and petty havoc
+without an object.</p>
+<p>The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land
+of which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between kingdom
+and duchy.&nbsp; Border wars had been common; just at this time the
+inroads of the French commanders at Mantes are said to have been specially
+destructive.&nbsp; William not only demanded redress from the King,
+but called for the surrender of the whole Vexin.&nbsp; What followed
+is a familiar story.&nbsp; Philip makes a foolish jest on the bodily
+state of his great rival, unable just then to carry out his threats.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The King of the English lies in at Rouen; there will be a great
+show of candles at his churching.&rdquo;&nbsp; As at Alen&ccedil;on
+in his youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, was
+stung to the uttermost by personal mockery.&nbsp; By the splendour of
+God, when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles
+at Philip&rsquo;s cost.&nbsp; He kept his word at the cost of Philip&rsquo;s
+subjects.&nbsp; The ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered
+the fruits of autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the
+enemy.&nbsp; But he did more than gather fruits; the candles of his
+churching were indeed lighted in the burning streets of Mantes.&nbsp;
+The picture of William the Great directing in person mere brutal havoc
+like this is strange even after the harrying of Northumberland and the
+making of the New Forest.&nbsp; Riding to and fro among the flames,
+bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel, gladdened at the sight
+of burning houses and churches, a false step of his horse gave him his
+death-blow.&nbsp; Carried to Rouen, to the priory of Saint Gervase near
+the city, he lingered from August 15 to September 7, and then the reign
+and life of the Conqueror came to an end.&nbsp; Forsaken by his children,
+his body stripped and well nigh forgotten, the loyalty of one honest
+knight, Herlwin of Conteville, bears his body to his grave in his own
+church at Caen.&nbsp; His very grave is disputed&mdash;a dispossessed
+<i>antecessor</i> claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of
+the Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with
+money.&nbsp; Into that resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky
+frame, and the rites of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the
+rites of his crowning.&nbsp; With much striving he had at last won his
+seven feet of ground; but he was not to keep it for ever.&nbsp; Religious
+warfare broke down his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured
+relic.&nbsp; Civil revolution swept away the one remaining fragment.&nbsp;
+And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs
+of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen&rsquo;s
+still tells us where the bones of William once lay but where they lie
+no longer.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and burial
+of the Conqueror.&nbsp; We shrink from giving the same trust to the
+long tale of penitence which is put into the mouth of the dying King.&nbsp;
+He may, in that awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of the last one-and-twenty
+years of his life; he hardly threw his repentance into the shape of
+a detailed autobiographical confession.&nbsp; But the more authentic
+sayings and doings of William&rsquo;s death-bed enable us to follow
+his course as an English statesman almost to his last moments.&nbsp;
+His end was one of devotion, of prayers and almsgiving, and of opening
+of the prison to them that were bound.&nbsp; All save one of his political
+prisoners, English and Norman, he willingly set free.&nbsp; Morkere
+and his companions from Ely, Walfnoth son of Godwine, hostage for Harold&rsquo;s
+faith, Wulf son of Harold and Ealdgyth, taken, we can hardly doubt,
+as a babe when Chester opened its gates to William, were all set free;
+some indeed were put in bonds again by the King&rsquo;s successor.&nbsp;
+But Ode William would not set free; he knew too well how many would
+suffer if he were again let loose upon the world.&nbsp; But love of
+kindred was still strong; at last he yielded, sorely against his will,
+to the prayers and pledges of his other brother.&nbsp; Ode went forth
+from his prison, again Bishop of Bayeux, soon again to be Earl of Kent,
+and soon to prove William&rsquo;s foresight by his deeds.</p>
+<p>William&rsquo;s disposal of his dominions on his death-bed carries
+on his political history almost to his last breath.&nbsp; Robert, the
+banished rebel, might seem to have forfeited all claims to the succession.&nbsp;
+But the doctrine of hereditary right had strengthened during the sixty
+years of William&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; He is made to say that, though
+he foresees the wretchedness of any land over which Robert should be
+the ruler, still he cannot keep him out of the duchy of Normandy which
+is his birthright.&nbsp; Of England he will not dare to dispose; he
+leaves the decision to God, seemingly to Archbishop Lanfranc as the
+vicar of God.&nbsp; He will only say that his wish is for his son William
+to succeed him in his kingdom, and he prays Lanfranc to crown him king,
+if he deem such a course to be right.&nbsp; Such a message was a virtual
+nomination, and William the Red succeeded his father in England, but
+kept his crown only by the help of loyal Englishmen against Norman rebels.&nbsp;
+William Rufus, it must be remembered, still under the tutelage of his
+father and Lanfranc, had not yet shown his bad qualities; he was known
+as yet only as the dutiful son who fought for his father against the
+rebel Robert.&nbsp; By ancient English law, that strong preference which
+was all that any man could claim of right belonged beyond doubt to the
+youngest of William&rsquo;s sons, the English &AElig;theling Henry.&nbsp;
+He alone was born in the land; he alone was the son of a crowned King
+and his Lady.&nbsp; It is perhaps with a knowledge of what followed
+that William is made to bid his youngest son wait while his eldest go
+before him; that he left him landless, but master of a hoard of silver,
+there is no reason to doubt.&nbsp; English feeling, which welcomed Henry
+thirteen years later, would doubtless have gladly seen his immediate
+accession; but it might have been hard, in dividing William&rsquo;s
+dominions, to have shut out the second son in favour of the third.&nbsp;
+And in the scheme of events by which conquered England was to rise again,
+the reign of Rufus, at the moment the darkest time of all, had its appointed
+share.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>That England could rise again, that she could rise with a new life,
+strengthened by her momentary overthrow, was before all things owing
+to the lucky destiny which, if she was to be conquered, gave her William
+the Great as her Conqueror.&nbsp; It is as it is in all human affairs.&nbsp;
+William himself could not have done all that he did, wittingly and unwittingly,
+unless circumstances had been favourable to him; but favourable circumstances
+would have been useless, unless there had been a man like William to
+take advantage of them.&nbsp; What he did, wittingly or unwittingly,
+he did by virtue of his special position, the position of a foreign
+conqueror veiling his conquest under a legal claim.&nbsp; The hour and
+the man were alike needed.&nbsp; The man in his own hour wrought a work,
+partly conscious, partly unconscious.&nbsp; The more clearly any man
+understands his conscious work, the more sure is that conscious work
+to lead to further results of which he dreams not.&nbsp; So it was with
+the Conqueror of England.&nbsp; His purpose was to win and to keep the
+kingdom of England, and to hand it on to those who should come after
+him more firmly united than it had ever been before.&nbsp; In this work
+his spirit of formal legality, his shrinking from needless change, stood
+him in good stead.&nbsp; He saw that as the kingdom of England could
+best be won by putting forth a legal claim to it, so it could best be
+kept by putting on the character of a legal ruler, and reigning as the
+successor of the old kings seeking the unity of the kingdom; he saw,
+from the example both of England and of other lands, the dangers which
+threatened that unity; he saw what measures were needed to preserve
+it in his own day, measures which have preserved it ever since.&nbsp;
+Here is a work, a conscious work, which entitles the foreign Conqueror
+to a place among English statesmen, and to a place in their highest
+rank.&nbsp; Further than this we cannot conceive William himself to
+have looked.&nbsp; All that was to come of his work in future ages was
+of necessity hidden from his eyes, no less than from the eyes of smaller
+men.&nbsp; He had assuredly no formal purpose to make England Norman;
+but still less had he any thought that the final outcome of his work
+would make England on one side more truly English than if he had never
+crossed the sea.&nbsp; In his ecclesiastical work he saw the future
+still less clearly.&nbsp; He designed to reform what he deemed abuses,
+to bring the English Church into closer conformity with the other Churches
+of the West; he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform
+would be the strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of
+John.&nbsp; His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wield
+powers, that he could hold forces in check, which would be too strong
+for those who should come after him.&nbsp; At his purposes with regard
+to the relations of England and Normandy it would be vain to guess.&nbsp;
+The mere leaving of kingdom and duchy to different sons would not necessarily
+imply that he designed a complete or lasting separation.&nbsp; But assuredly
+William did not foresee that England, dragged into wars with France
+as the ally of Normandy, would remain the lasting rival of France after
+Normandy had been swallowed up in the French kingdom.&nbsp; If rivalry
+between England and France had not come in this way, it would doubtless
+have come in some other way; but this is the way in which it did come
+about.&nbsp; As a result of the union of Normandy and England under
+one ruler, it was part of William&rsquo;s work, but a work of which
+William had no thought.&nbsp; So it was with the increased connexion
+of every kind between England and the continent of Europe which followed
+on William&rsquo;s coming.&nbsp; With one part of Europe indeed the
+connexion of England was lessened.&nbsp; For three centuries before
+William&rsquo;s coming, dealings in war and peace with the Scandinavian
+kingdoms had made up a large part of English history.&nbsp; Since the
+baffled enterprise of the holy Cnut, our dealings with that part of
+Europe have been of only secondary account.</p>
+<p>But in our view of William as an English statesman, the main feature
+of all is that spirit of formal legality of which we have so often spoken.&nbsp;
+Its direct effects, partly designed, partly undesigned, have affected
+our whole history to this day.&nbsp; It was his policy to disguise the
+fact of conquest, to cause all the spoils of conquest to be held, in
+outward form, according to the ancient law of England.&nbsp; The fiction
+became a fact, and the fact greatly helped in the process of fusion
+between Normans and English.&nbsp; The conquering race could not keep
+itself distinct from the conquered, and the form which the fusion took
+was for the conquerors to be lost in the greater mass of the conquered.&nbsp;
+William founded no new state, no new nation, no new constitution; he
+simply kept what he found, with such modifications as his position made
+needful.&nbsp; But without any formal change in the nature of English
+kingship, his position enabled him to clothe the crown with a practical
+power such as it had never held before, to make his rule, in short,
+a virtual despotism.&nbsp; These two facts determined the later course
+of English history, and they determined it to the lasting good of the
+English nation.&nbsp; The conservative instincts of William allowed
+our national life and our national institutions to live on unbroken
+through his conquest.&nbsp; But it was before all things the despotism
+of William, his despotism under legal forms, which preserved our national
+institutions to all time.&nbsp; As a less discerning conqueror might
+have swept our ancient laws and liberties away, so under a series of
+native kings those laws and liberties might have died out, as they died
+out in so many continental lands.&nbsp; But the despotism of the crown
+called forth the national spirit in a conscious and antagonistic shape;
+it called forth that spirit in men of both races alike, and made Normans
+and English one people.&nbsp; The old institutions lived on, to be clothed
+with a fresh life, to be modified as changed circumstances might make
+needful.&nbsp; The despotism of the Norman kings, the peculiar character
+of that despotism, enabled the great revolution of the thirteenth century
+to take the forms, which it took, at once conservative and progressive.&nbsp;
+So it was when, more than four centuries after William&rsquo;s day,
+England again saw a despotism carried on under the forms of law.&nbsp;
+Henry the Eighth reigned as William had reigned; he did not reign like
+his brother despots on the continent; the forms of law and freedom lived
+on.&nbsp; In the seventeenth century therefore, as in the thirteenth,
+the forms stood ready to be again clothed with a new life, to supply
+the means for another revolution, again at once conservative and progressive.&nbsp;
+It has been remarked a thousand times that, while other nations have
+been driven to destroy and to rebuild the political fabric, in England
+we have never had to destroy and to rebuild, but have found it enough
+to repair, to enlarge, and to improve.&nbsp; This characteristic of
+English history is mainly owing to the events of the eleventh century,
+and owing above all to the personal agency of William.&nbsp; As far
+as mortal man can guide the course of things when he is gone, the course
+of our national history since William&rsquo;s day has been the result
+of William&rsquo;s character and of William&rsquo;s acts.&nbsp; Well
+may we restore to him the surname that men gave him in his own day.&nbsp;
+He may worthily take his place as William the Great alongside of Alexander,
+Constantine, and Charles.&nbsp; They may have wrought in some sort a
+greater work, because they had a wider stage to work it on.&nbsp; But
+no man ever wrought a greater and more abiding work on the stage that
+fortune gave him than he</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Qui dux Normannis, qui Caesar praefuit Anglis.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place on the
+roll of English statesmen, and no man that came after him has won a
+right to a higher place.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR ***</p>
+<pre>
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+</pre></body>
+</html>
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